Dear customer,
We’re writing to remind you about changes to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) from 1 September and what this means for you.
• From 1 September CJRS will pay 70% of usual wages up to a cap of £2,187.50 per month for the hours furloughed employees do not work.
• You will still need to pay your furloughed employees at least 80% of their usual wages for the hours they do not work, up to a cap of £2,500 per month. You will need to fund the difference between this and the CJRS grant yourself.
• The caps are proportional to the hours not worked. For example, if your employee is furloughed for half their usual hours in September, you are entitled to claim 70% of their usual wages for the hours they do not work up to £1,093.75 (50% of the £2,187.50 cap).
• You will continue to have to pay furloughed employees’ National Insurance (NI) and pension contributions from your own funds.
Further guidance and live webinars offering you more support on changes to the scheme and how they impact you are available to book online – go to GOV.UK and search 'help and support if your business is affected by coronavirus'.
We are still receiving very high demand on our phone lines and webchat, so the quickest way to find the support you may need is on GOV.UK. This will leave our phone lines and webchat service open for those who need them most.
It’s important that you provide all the data we need to process your claim. Payment of your grant may be at risk or delayed if you submit a claim that is incomplete or incorrect, so we want to help you get this right. We will get in touch if we see any employee data missing from your previous claims.
You can find everything you’ll need to help make your claim on GOV.UK, including a useful calculator and guidance on the data you need to provide and the format you need to use to ensure your claim is accepted. Search for ‘claim for wages through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme’.
If you’re claiming for 100 or more employees, please download and use our template as this will help you make sure your data is right – search 'download a template if you're claiming for 100 or more employees through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme' on GOV.UK.
We’ve recently updated our CJRS guidance to make it easier for you to find the most relevant, up-to-date information.
If you need to check older guidance – for example, information for your claims ending on or before 30 June – you can search 'check if you can claim for your employees' wages through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme' or 'check which employees you can put on furlough to use the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme' on GOV.UK. A link to previous guidance can be found in boxes at the top of these pages.
Stay vigilant about scams, which may mimic government messages as a way of appearing authentic and unthreatening. Search 'scams' on GOV.UK for information on how to recognise genuine HMRC contact. You can also forward suspicious emails claiming to be from HMRC to phishing@hmrc.gov.uk and texts to 60599.
I hope this information helps you and your business and we’ll continue to keep you updated on scheme developments over the coming weeks.
Yours faithfully
Jim Harra
Chief Executive and Permanent Secretary – HMRC
