Employer Notice Revenue to operate Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme

The Government announced the establishment of a Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme to respond to the economic impact of Covid-19. This scheme will be operated by Revenue and enables employees, whose employers are affected by the pandemic, to receive significant supports directly from their employer. The subsidy scheme will be operational from 26 March 2020.

The Temporary Wage Subsidy replaces the previous Employer COVID-19 Employer Refund Scheme and significantly increases the support payment from the current €203 per employee per week. Revenue will be contacting all employers who applied for the previous scheme to inform them of the new enhanced support arrangements and provide options to transfer to the new subsidy scheme.

The scheme is available to employers from all sectors (excluding the civil service and non-commercial semi-state sector) who have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In general, the subsidy refunds qualifying employers up to 70% of the employee’s average net weekly pay (or equivalent for monthly or fortnightly pay frequencies) to a maximum of €410 per week, per employee.

To qualify for the scheme employers must:

• be experiencing significant negative economic disruption due to Covid-19,
• be able to demonstrate to the satisfaction of Revenue a minimum of 25% decline in turnover
• be unable to pay normal wages and outgoings in full
• will retain employees on the payroll and
• make best efforts to maintain a significant, or 100 per cent, income for the period of the subsidy.

The names of all employers operating this scheme will be published on Revenue’s website.

The scheme is confined to employees, who are on the employer’s payroll records as at 29 February 2020, for whom a payroll submission has already been made by the employer to Revenue in the period from 1 February 2020 to 15 March 2020. The employee must not have made a claim for a similar payment from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection.

How to apply
Employers, or their agents, apply to Revenue to operate the scheme by carrying out the following steps:

• Log on to ROS myEnquiries and select the category ‘Covid-19: Temporary Wage Subsidy’
• Read the “Covid-19: Temporary Wage Subsidy Self-Declaration” and press the ‘Submit’ button.
• Employers must record details of a refund bank account and must Log on to ROS and in ‘Manage bank accounts’, ‘Manage EFT’, enter the refund bank account that the refund is to be made to.

Details of the scheme are available on the Revenue website.