With the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) opening for claims on Monday 20th April, Saint & Co have already made many claims on behalf of our payroll clients for furloughed staff costs.
While the claim process is relatively straight forward, from our experience last week of actually making the claims in practice, there are a couple of questions that may make you think –
- What is your Unique Tax Reference (UTR)? If you are a company, it will be the company’s UTR (corporation tax reference from your CT600), for partnerships, the partnership UTR (from the partnership tax return (top left of front page)), and for sole traders the individual’s UTR (from your tax return (top left of front page)). If you do not know your UTR, then speak to your usual contact, who will be able to let you know it.
- What is the address associated with a bank account? Ideally, the bank details you enter should be the business bank account, and the address is the address that appears on the bank statement. This could be different to the normal business address if for example you have two businesses, but the statements are sent to only one of them or your home address.
Claim dates – do they matter?
Yes – claim dates shouldn’t overlap, so if you intend to make another claim, the next claim should start after the current claim ends. HMRC will no doubt be checking the claim amounts against the RTI submissions amongst other things, so you should ensure the RTI submissions are filed for the claim you are doing.
Employees
The lengthiest part of the claim process is entering your employees, particularly if you have a lot to claim for. You will need to be accurate in answering exactly how many staff you are claiming for, as if you enter a wrong number, you can’t amend this, so may have to start the whole claim again. The staff member’s full names and NI numbers need to be entered individually, checking each name/NI number as you go. If you are claiming for more than 100 staff, then claim amounts need to be entered per employee too. An employee list and calculation upload facility is available in these cases.
When will you get payment?
Finally, HMRC have said that they hope to pay the claim to the specified bank account within 6 working days, so if you made a claim on the 20th April, payments should start appearing in your bank account from 27th April, provided any HMRC verification checks are not causing any delays.
If you are unsure about any part of a claim you are submitting, then contact us we are here to help!
If you know anyone who may benefit from our newsletters and updates, please feel free to forward this email or ask them contact us to opt in to our mailing list.
