New “JobKeeper” payment: $1500 per fortnight for each employee they keep on over the next six months

In regard to the Jobkeeper payments, does anyone understand how the Business Eligibility period works.

Do you only get the job keeper payments for periods that have <30% turnover than a previous comparable period (for example if April and June were < 30% but May was only <20% - then only get payments for the 2 months), or do you prove the eligibility once (ie. April <30%) and receive the payments for the next six months?

And what are the definitions of a comparable period - does it need to be a month/quarter compared to the previous years month/quarter? What about a quarter compared to the previous quarter (Apr-Jun compared to Jan-Mar) ?

Regards,

Jason

 

G’day paul,

Would you happen to know if those people eligible to receive the job keeper payment from their employer, can then go get another job elsewhere temporarily and not effect the job keeper payment, and still earn additional worked hours from the other temp job?

Can’t find this info anywhere.

 

Hi All

Need some people opinions

A casual who normally works 2 days per week and has done for 2yrs.

now they are rostered on their normal shifts and have said they won’t be coming in because they don’t want to increase their risk of Covid 19.

do they receive the Job Keeper payment still?

Because The business has to hire another casual to cover their shifts which means paying this casual who isn’t eligible for job keeper while my normal casual thinks they are getting job keeper as well.

 

See the original post, and maybe give the ATO a call.

 

My understanding is that you make the application on behalf of the employee you wish to retain. If that person is not going to come into work, that is THEIR decision. Based on that, I would say no Job Keeper for them. Go hire a new casual that will happily work through this mess. Sadly the new employee won't be eligible as they need to have been in employment for over 12 months.

 

Agree
we believe they have shifts and refused , so they are no longer eligible for Job Keeper and if they don't turn up again, they can be let go and then be eligible for Job Seeker payments which are paid through Centrelink.

Just waiting on the final product and then the ATO can give clearer directions.

 

Jobkeeper only is eleigible if the employee is paid $1500+ a FN by the employer and the employer is registered. Jobkeeper is paid to the emplyer to compensate for payments already made to the employee. Its an alternative to jobkeeper. Not additional. If they quit then its over and they also may be unable to access jobseeker.Centrelink will invoke the usual rules I suspect for people who resign rather than stood down ie wait periods etc and the core jobseeker may only be paid. (Lower rate)

This difficult time is no time for employees who dont want to work or want free handouts. All efforts are to support businesses and their employees to stay open and working to the extent they can.

 

I’ve seen you post this in a few threads and just left it until now, but everything I’ve read on this says it’s not the case, that many people will get a pay RISE. Eg: 'Pretty generous': Workers could double their income under JobKeeper plan

& Jobkeeper payment: am I eligible? Here's everything you need to know to register
“Will I receive $1,500 even if I ordinarily earn less?
If an employee ordinarily receives less than $1,500 in income per fortnight before tax, their employer must pay them, at a minimum, $1,500 per fortnight, before tax. It is therefore possible for a long-term casual or part-time worker to receive more than their ordinary pay.”

 

I agree with @Hetty - if you ordinarily get paid less, you would be entitled to the full $1,500pf which is getting paid to the employer.

It's just a mechanism to keep people off the Centrelink queue; but requires the poor old employer to fund it at their own cost and own risk. I don't think it's aimed at small businesses at all.

The $ difference between JobSeeker and JobKeeper is about $80pf apparently.

ETA: there's nothing in it for the employer, they have to fund the cashflow, manage the as yet unknown workers comp implication, manage the payroll, accrue leave & pay SG on the normal wage part (if any).

 

Agree - all employees receive at least $1500 per fortnight.
Not sure how employer doesn’t benefit - all salary up to $1500 per fortnight is now covered by government.
Superannuation etc is paid on the ‘salary portion’, super is payable @ employers discretion if the jobkeeper payment portion is greater than ‘salary portion’. Ie $1000 f/n salary - super applies, $500 job keeper ‘top-up’ super @ employers discretion.

 

True, I was thinking in the context of employees that had been stood down or casuals with Nil hours. So not actively working. I understand it's one-in-all-in, you can't pick and choose which will get the JobKeeper.

 

After reading on multiple different sites,
you get paid $1500 per fortnight by the government to the employer regardless of income, but as long as you arent casual for less than 12 months, backdated from March 1 (or there abouts), if you get paid more than $1500 per fortnight, the employer has to make the rest up

which got me thinking, if you are a boss of a bar for example with lots of students working weekends at a bar type setup, you will still get $1500 per fortnight per employee, it would be in the best interests of all the staff by re hiring everyone and give them 1 shift per week so everyone gets $1500, over just rehiring one staff and get them to work full time hours , if your business doesnt need that many staff

 

Well it might be in the best interests of the staff, what about the employer?
If there's 20 staff, that's $30,000 the employer needs to come up with at least twice, maybe three times before getting reimbursed from the government. Where's that money coming from if the bar is closed?

 

Well that would totally depend on the business and the owner
If it's a bigger business you could deploy staff to different departments,
You could get staff to do jobs that didn't have the time previously.
Staff could upskill

Many options

 

Some more information released on the ATO website.

Doesn't seem to be any information on the site in regard to what happens if you project your turnover will drop by more than 30% and it turns out it hasn't. In my case GST turnover for March didn't drop (but as it is all invoiced on 30 day terms) but April/May/June may do.

 

Still waiting to see if there's an alternative "test".

Our February contracts value won are down 88% from least Feb, March down 86% and April currently tracking at down 92% yet our GST for all those months (and projected for the April-June QTR is tracking to be higher than the same periods last year for a couple of reasons:-

1 - as said earlier in the post, our revenue is anything up to 90 days behind contracts, we start to see GST reporting drop significantly from around May. Although we're not being awarded any work our revenue is still high from passed due invoicing coming in currently.

2 - Our clients (construction industry) plead poverty consonantly and drag out payment of invoices as long as possible, UNTIL it suits them (like now), suddenly all these clients are settling up their outstanding invoicing to clear as much off their books as possible (cynically I'm assuming this is to help get get as much stimulus as possible somehow), which in turn then means our revenue looks rather good whereas in fact it's just old debts finally getting paid.

We're almost out of work but we have kept all of our staff on in the hope we'll still somehow qualify them for the Job Keepers (which we will at some point, but we still have to find wages up to that point).

I spent all Easter break formulating a mega spreadsheet from our project management software, cross referenced with our Xero accounting books and my own spreadsheet tracking so I now have a month-by-month list of projects that tracks monthly contract value won, revenue and invoicing raised and compares it with every month from 1 year prior and then further grouped by quarter, the only metric that shows significant downturn is contract value won (as above), on paper our revenue and invoicing still look good for another month or two, then we fall off the cliffs edge across all metrics.

 

Who is the payment made to? The employer? Can the employer withhold it?

 

ATO directly to employer which must be paid onto the employee, otherwise the employer gets spanked by a wooden stick

 

and if I read correctly, you cant just choose your favourite employees, you have to bring all of the m back

 

Apparently you don’t have to pay all employees if you don’t like them.

Watch form 13.10, josh answers this question. It’s in the employers best interest to pay them, but it’s an open answer. You don’t have to pay all employees.