The Government’s priority in so far as the Temporary Wages Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) is concerned is to ensure that employers experiencing significant negative economic disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic can register for and start to receive payment quickly. The overarching ambition of the scheme is to ensure the key relationship between employers and employees is maintained to the greatest extent possible so that businesses can restart operations quickly once the crisis has passed.
In the context of the compelling need for immediate implementation of the TWSS, the scheme had to build on data returned to Revenue through its real-time PAYE system for January and February 2020. The key eligibility criteria for the scheme, as prescribed in the underlying law, are that -
- the business is suffering significant negative economic impact due to the pandemic,
- the employees were on the payroll at 29 February 2020, and
- the employer had fulfilled its PAYE reporting obligations for February 2020 by 15 March 2020, which was recently extended, by concession, to ‘before’ 1 April 2020.
The latter two criteria were particularly designed to prevent abuse and exploitation of the scheme.
Under PAYE legislation employers who qualify to pay their PAYE/PRSI/USC liabilities to Revenue on a quarterly basis, but operate their payroll on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis, must file payroll submissions with Revenue each time they pay their staff. This payroll data is the key requirement without which the TWSS cannot operate and it is not possible to provide access to the system where employers have not met these statutory filing requirements.
Revenue has advised me that the difficulties encountered by the business in question in accessing the TWSS arose because it failed to file payroll submissions for January and February through the real-time PAYE system. The fact that the business is facilitated with a quarterly payment arrangement for its PAYE liabilities does not remove the requirement to file payroll submissions with Revenue each time it pays wages. The consequence of not filing the January and February payroll submissions is that the TWSS system cannot calculate a subsidy payment for the business in respect of its employee because the required data has not been provided. It is not possible for Revenue to develop solutions that could provide access where an employer has not adhered to the statutory requirements.
