Treasury and the ATO have released further information on how to apply for the JobKeeper stimulus package.
What you need to do…
- Ensure that you have registered your interest. This should be done now on the ATO website.
- Check that you and your employees are eligible. Eligible Employers, Eligible Employees
- Notify your employees that you will be claiming the JobKeeper payments on their behalf.
- Send each eligible employee who you will be claiming for an Employee Nomination Notice. This must be completed by 30 April if you plan to claim for the month of April.
- Make sure you pay each employee that you plan to claim for $750 per week starting from the fortnight 30 March 2020 to 12 April. As this is the first month, the ATO will allow you to make up any payments as long as each employee being claimed for receives $3,000 by the end of the month of April. If you do not pay this amount, then you will not be eligible to claim the payment for this month as the payments are a reimbursement only.
- From Monday 20 April 2020 you should enrol for the jobKeeper payments through the Business Portal and use your mygovID to authenticate. This must be done by the end of April to claim payments for the month of April. ATO Business Portal
- You will need to provide your nominated bank account details when completing the form. You will also need to estimate the number of employees that you will be claiming for in the April month.
- From 4 May 2020 you will be required to confirm through the ATO business portal your eligible employee details. You can do this by either using the pre-populated information from STP reporting, manually entering the information or engaging your registered Tax Agent to assist you .
- Once your information from step 8 above is received and correct, you will receive a payment for all eligible employees.
- Each month you will be required to report through online services or business portal that your eligible employees are still eligible. You will not have to retest your fall in turnover each month, however you will need to provide your current earnings and projected income in your monthly JobKeeper Declaration Report.
Where can I find more information?
The ATO has set out all of the above information under 3 categories on the ATO website. The information is broken down by Employers, Employees and Tax Professionals.
We ask that you please read all of the above information to ensure that you are clear with what you need to do now. Please complete all steps as they become available to ensure that you will be eligible.
We ask that you do not contact our office until after the enrolment form has been released next week and we issue more information. We will be available to assist clients once the forms are released, however we ask that you are patient as our staff are working around the clock to get everything done as quickly and accurately as possible for a large number of businesses. It will be quicker if you are able to lodge the forms yourself as we are unable to guarantee that we can process all forms before the cut-off date of 30 April for the April JobKeeper payments given the short turn-around time.
We thank you for your patience and understanding. We will endeavour to provide as much information as possible when it becomes available to ensure that all of our clients are assisted through this difficult time.