The Treasury has issued a Treasury Direction at its usual time of Friday afternoon (02.12.2020)! This time it gives further details of the Job Retention Bonus.
As a reminder the Job Retention Bonus is designed to encourage and incentivise employers to hold on to their employees and not make any redundancies.
- The Job Retention Bonus is a one-off £1000 payment to an employer for each eligible employee who was furloughed and have been kept on continuously until 31 January 2021.
- Employers are not able to claim the bonus until 15 February 2021 whereby businesses have until 31 March 2021 to claim. There will be further guidance issued by the end of January 2021.
- Employers are not obliged to pay the employee the bonus.
- Employers are still able to claim the bonus if using the Job Support Scheme.
- If an employee is serving a contractual or statutory notice in the period up to 31 January 2021, employers will not be able to claim the bonus.
- To be eligible, employees must be paid enough in each tax month to meet the bonus minimum income threshold.
- Employers can’t claim for employees who are transferred to you after the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme closes on 31 October 2020.
To meet the minimum income threshold you must pay your employee a total of at least £1,560 (gross) throughout the tax months:
- 6 November to 5 December 2020
- 6 December 2020 to 5 January 2021
- 6 January to 5 February 2021
You must pay your employee at least one payment of taxable earnings (of any amount) in each of the relevant tax months.
The minimum income threshold criteria apply regardless of:
- how often you pay your employees.
- any circumstances that may have reduced your employee’s pay in the relevant tax periods, such as being on statutory leave or unpaid leave.
The government have published some scenario examples which help determine whether employees meet the minimum threshold.
If you have any questions surrounding the Job Retention Bonus or the Job Support Scheme, get in touch and we can guide you through the information.
