2020-10-20: Level 5 Update - Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme

Hi Everybody,

As you know the Government has announced that from Wednesday night we are moving to Level 5 of the Living with Covid framework.

Part of this will include a change to the operation of the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme from now until the end of January 2021.

At this stage we have not received any detailed information from Revenue about the exact nature of the changes, but I have outlined below what has been published at this stage.

We have scheduled a webinar for 3PM on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the changes to EWSS - We hope that we will have further details then. (but remember, it is possible that we wont!!!!!)

In addition we have scheduled another webinar for Thursday morning at 10:30 regarding the TWSS reconciliation process.

These webinars are free of charge, but you must register for them and you can register on our events page at

https://www.collsoft.ie/Events

Depending on demand we will schedule further webinars on Thursday or Friday as needed.

What do we know so far - the only official information currently available is at the Merrion Street Government website;

https://merrionstreet.ie/en/News-Room/News/Ireland_placed_on_Level_5_of_the_Plan_for_Living_with_COVID.html

This covers many topics, but specifically in relation to EWSS it states that


"The EWSS is also being amended to align with the amendment to PUP. This means here will be 5 payment rates/bands as follows:


f) 0 - €151 = €0
g) >€151 < €203 = €203
h) >€203 < €300 = €250
i) >€300 < €400 = €300
j) >€400< €1,462 = €350


The main aim of this scheme is to ensure where possible employees retain their link with their employer rather than become unemployed. This revised scheme will run to end January 2021."


From a technical standpoint, the lower and upper thresholds of EWSS remain the same at €151.50 and €1462 respectively (we think the reference to €150 is a mistake), so your current software will apply for EWSS from Revenue correctly.

However, as the rates of EWSS subsidies have changed, the calculations of subsidies within Payroll are incorrect - we only have zero, €151.50 and €203 per week. We will update the software to take account, but we are waiting for exact details regarding the timing of these changes.

We will do our best to keep you updated as the situation becomes clearer.

Keep Safe,

CollSoft
Creation date: 20/10/2020 00:16      Updated: 30/11/2020 16:10