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MORE THAN HALF of employers who availed of the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme last year now owe a repayment to Revenue.
The scheme was available to employers in sectors who predicted their turnover would be down by at least 25% due to the pandemic.
Its aim was to help businesses keep staff on their payroll, but some businesses who did better than they predicted are now facing repayment bills.
Reconciliation balances are available for employers to review on the Revenue’s Online Service (ROS) from today.
56% of employers who participated in the scheme owe money to be paid back to Revenue, worth a combined total of €224 million. €90 million has already been repaid.
3% are due additional subsidy payments that have a total value of €1.4 million, while 41% have no further balance payable.
Employers have three months until 30 June to finalise their reconciliation information on ROS.
For those who have no balance payable, employers can choose the option to accept the information and their participation in the scheme will be ended.
Employers who owe a repayment can finalise the process by accepting their reconciliation balance. Revenue will then issue a Statement of Account the next day showing the employer’s position.
Revenue has suspended debt collection for VAT and employer PAYE that businesses incurred while their trade was stopped completely or significantly reduced due to Covid-19, a process known as debt warehousing.
Employers who owe a reconciliation balance from the TWSS scheme but who are eligible for debt warehousing can have that balance also warehoused.
For other employers, the reconciliation balance can be paid on ROS, or they can apply for a phased payment arrangement and repay the amount due over an “extended timeline”.
€2.9 billion was paid out to support 664,000 workers across 66,500 employers under the the scheme.
Revenue’s head of Accountant General’s and Strategic Planning Division Brian Boyle said that “in the rare circumstance where an employer believes that the information he or she previously provided is incorrect, and that the reconciliation balance is therefore incorrect, he or she should review the subsidy paid data previously submitted and make any corrections required”.
“This will result in a revised reconciliation balance, which will be immediately available in ROS,” Boyle said.
Most employers should be able to access their reconciliation balance today, but Revenue is still calculating the balance for a small number of employers.
Revenue is to notify those employers when their balance is available.
Concerns were raised at the end of the year on the impact the repayments would have on employers.
Senator Sean Kyne said that it would be a “cruel irony if repaying the support received was the final nail in the coffin for this business”.
On Revenue’s assessment of businesses, Kyne said that “for some it is proving a sobering experience as their hard work and change of direction has meant that the 25% reduction in turnover necessary has been slightly missed and, as a result, Revenue is demanding the return of the temporary wage subsidy funding”.
Some employers have not yet submitted parts or any of their information to Revenue.
Boyle said that “over the last number of months, we have engaged with the relatively small number of employers who have not submitted any, or all, of their subsidy paid data, requesting them to provide the outstanding information”.
“Where an employer has not submitted any subsidy paid data, the TWSS reconciliation balance, to be repaid to Revenue, will reflect the total amount of subsidy paid to them under the TWSS,” Boyle said.
“My advice to these employers is to immediately look at their TWSS reconciliation balance in ROS to understand the full impact of not submitting the required information,” he said.
“To rectify matters, the employers concerned need to provide the full and accurate subsidy paid data as soon as possible, thereby ensuring that their reconciliation balance is accurate. If the information is not provided, then the total TWSS payment received by them over the course of the scheme, as reflected in the reconciliation balance, is fully repayable to Revenue.”
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If the people in revenue ran the Government the pandamic would be over.
@Gary Dorrian: instead we are run be teachers and doctors!
@Tony Humphreys: and the rest.
@Gary Dorrian: who would you put in charge?
@Paul Furey: revenue, it’s there in his comment.
@Tony Humphreys: Primary school teachers at that. Not seen too may doctors.
Had an audit myself while having 3 of my staff on the payment. My revenue’s were only down 18% for the period they were looking at but we knew by the amount of new clients we were getting that this was going to increase massively over the coming few months. I explained the situation to revenue during the audit and I was full sure I was going to be made to pay it back but to their credit, they looked at the big picture and were happy to sign it off. Never thought I would see that!
I feel for the businesses that dropped maybe 20% in turnover but who have tight margins – this could be enough to tip them over the edge. No doubt there will have been a good few companies taking advantage of the scheme but there will also be a lot on the brink of closure from this. Nothing worse than getting a massive tax bill in the post!
So the employee pays the tax due on the subsidy even though it was based on net income and now half the employers have to repay the subsidy. Revenue are the only true winners so.
@NotMyIreland: Yeah I always thought that was strange. How can the employer benefit from the subsidy but the employee then has to cover the cost of it?
@Gary O’Brien: the employee didn’t cover the cost, my husband’s employer used it for him, mine did not. When I calculated it all what they said he owed was bang on, basically he paid no tax on the twss or usc so the bill they send is what you would have paid anyway. The employee is not paying any extra.
@Niamh Brady: the employee got their regular pay after tax with the subsidy and top up. So net pay remained the same, but then they had to pay tax on the subsidy so it ended up a defacto pay cut to the employee?
@NotMyIreland: hard to explain in text but I can only go on my husbands figures but overall he had a pay cut for the year, cut him to 70%, then after few months restored to 80%, then 90%. Still waiting to be restored to full pay!! Worked the whole time too as essential service. Taking advantage of the staff basically to save themselves money as profits were not down. Anyway he paid the correct amount overall if that makes sense.
@Gary O’Brien: the employees kept their jobs
@Niamh Brady:
Correct!
And the subsidy is only repayable by companies not suffering a significant drop in Turnover during 2020, due to pandemic.
In early stages who could forecast exactly how things would pan out. Fair play; TWSS support was made available anyway, in a timely fashion, without much fuss by the State.
Firms not impacted will have no problem repaying subsidy. And State has granted reasonable repayment period if requested and justified. So fairness all round!
@NotMyIreland: for the first 8weeks of the scheme employers got 410€ flat fee for every employee, they may not have needed it for each individual they may have only needed 350€ etc so that’s where the repayment is coming from. They fixed it then and only paid the amount which was actually due when you uploaded to revenue. They created the most confusing subsidy it was and still is a nightmare
This wage subsidy aside..Does anybody understand the tax credit certs you get from revenue now and again?
@Rory Murphy: Does anybody understand tax?
@Rory Murphy: yes, they tell how little money you take home each pay packet in as confusing a manner as possible so you are just baffled enough to not go in a full on rage.
@Rory Murphy: totally mystified by what this mysterious organisation does or by the paper nonsense it sends out to me
What about all the students who were earning 20e a week being given 300 a week for the past year? Surely that should be clawed back?
@TheDublinGirly: What will we do about all the public servants who got payed to stay at home, should we take some of that back, or will we just go with the slogan “We’re all in it together” and forget about it.
@conriel: you don’t actually know what a public servant is do you? Just jumped on a bandwagon. Talk to the nurses and other hospital staff, paramedics, soldiers brought in to take swabs, gardai, cleaners etc about how they’ve been sitting at home…..
Outsource the vaccination rollout to the kinahans, it’ll be complete on a month
If we all worked in the Public sector life would be very simple, Happy Days.
@conriel: and the country would be even more broke
@conriel: employed excuse me
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