The Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) has now ended as of 31st August, 2020 and has been replaced by the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS) support scheme from 1st September, 2020.

The good news is that whilst proprietary directors were originally excluded from the scheme, they have now been accepted into the EWSS support scheme which is currently set to run until March 2021 (subject to amendments).

 

The EWSS support is for the company and is not for the individual and will provide a flat rate subsidy to qualifying companies based on the numbers of paid and eligible individuals on the company’s payroll.

 

We have therefore already made the application for your company and we are working as quickly as possible to see if your company will be eligible.

 

The EWSS eligibility criteria are based on a number of factors:

 

  1. That the company’s turnover is expected to be reduced by 30% due to disruption caused by COVID19.  The turnover of the company for each month going forward will be compared to the same period for 2019.  This will need to be reviewed on a month by month basis. So, we will be keeping a close eye on the turnover to ensure your company does continue to meet the criteria.
  2. Where a company commenced after 1 November 2019, we will be looking at the projected turnover.
  3. The individual must have been on the company payroll at any stage during the period 1 July 2019 and 30 June 2020 and remains on the payroll.  Therefore unpaid leave or acceptance of a part-time contract will cease the individual’s eligibility for EWSS.

 

One of the main differences between the TWSS and EWSS is that previously, once you qualified for the TWSS, you were entitled to a subsidy payment based on your average basic pay for January and February 2020, regardless of whether you had any flying hours or agency income for the month. Under the terms of the EWSS you must be in receipt of some agency income in order to receive the subsidy. If you have not flown and have no agency income for the month you will not be entitled to receive any support.

 

Any individual that was not eligible for the TWSS may be eligible for the EWSS backdated to 1st July, 2020.  We are currently working on these cases to see if the company meets the criteria and will make a backdated claim if appropriate.  A claim for these individual’s cannot be made until mid- September at the earliest.

 

If your company is eligible, the payment will be made in arrears by the Irish Revenue.  The maximum that will be paid to your company is €880 per month per individual and the first payment will be expected in October.  We will be calculating the amount due to each individual AFTER the September payroll, so please do not send in queries requesting confirmation of how much your company will receive.  We do not have these answers for you as yet.

 

Therefore just to be clear, September’s subsidy will not be paid to you until the middle of October at the earliest.so you will not be receiving any subsidy during the upcoming payroll month of September.

 

The EWSS will not be a payroll payment, so we are currently working out how we will operate the scheme and how we can implement it successfully.  It will not be shown on any payslip.

 

Please bear with us whilst we await software updates from our payroll provider and also specific details of how the scheme will operate from the Revenue.

 

We will however give further updates in due course so please do keep an eye on our KB and FB: