Job Keeper Allowance – its going to be a team effort!

 

Information about the governments job keeper allowance is slowly starting to trickle in and there is still a lot of questions that we need to better understand, however one thing is already abundantly clear, it will be important for Payroll, HR and Finance teams to work together to prepare their business to administer these payments.

It has already been indicated that these payments will be administered by the ATO using STP reporting, therefore the burden will mostly need to be worn by the payroll team to ensure that these benefits are paid and claimed correctly, but that doesn't mean that Payroll Teams should be doing it on their own.

While we wait for more guidance on these benefits, here are some steps that you can start to take as payroll leads in your business to prepare for the benefits;

 

Register with the ATO for updates to the Job Keeper Allowance (click on the image to go to the registration page)

Liaise with your finance team to understand how the following applies to your business;

  • Your business turnover is more than or less than $1 billion dollars per year

  • Whether your business has had, or is expecting a decrease in turnover of 30% or 50% based on the above as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

 
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Liaise with your HR teams to establish whether you already have the information required to determine whether employees are eligible (ie visa status/ citizenship) if you do not have this information readily available start thinking about how you can gather this information from your employees.

Start thinking about your system and how you will record information.

  • Can you create custom fields, or utilise existing fields to record the employee eligibility status?

  • How are you going to record the eligible payments made to employees? We are unsure whether there will need to be a special reporting code for STP, but think about what steps you would need to go through should that be the case.

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How will you inform employees that you are claiming this payment on their behalf.

Do you have an option to generate a system communication for this? A solution could be as simple as a payslip message, or a notice in your self service portal, but if neither those things are options, what else are you able to do to make this easier on your teams.

Think about business decisions that need to be made. If you already pay someone more than $1500 per fortnight before tax, it appears so far that you will continue to pay their normal pay and will be able to claim the $1500 payment, but if you do not pay the employee $1500 per fortnight before tax, you will need to “top up” to that amount.

Some considerations to be made by the business may be:

  • Will the business be paying super on the top up payments? This seems to be optional for the employer based on the information released so far.

  • If you have made people redundant, you may have to re-hire those employees and pay them the $1500 per fortnight (we are waiting on more specifics on this area as there are a number of ramifications with this)

At a time that businesses are already under increased pressure, it will be important to make sure we understand all the details before starting to make any additional payments to employees, but by starting to prepare now you will be well placed to introduce the benefits as quickly as possible.

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Gemma McDonnell-Mossop
Independent Payroll Consultant

There are still many questions, but here are some things you can be doing in Payroll to get ready for the Job Keeper payments announced today.

 
Gemma McDonnell-Mossop