Extension of the JobKeeper Payment - October 2020

The Government is extending the JobKeeper Payment by a further six months to March 2021. Support will be targeted to businesses and not-for-profits that continue to be significantly impacted by the Coronavirus.
The payment rate will be reduced, and a lower payment rate will be introduced for those who work fewer hours. Other eligibility rules remain unchanged.

Employer guidance

Employers may seek guidance about employer and employee eligibility from the JobKeeper Payment for business website:

ato.gov.au/jobkeeperextension

STP reporting of tier level

Employers may use STP to report the Tier level to which they have assessed and assigned eligible employees. The Tier level must be reported as Other Allowances using the specific text descriptions only:
• JK-TIER1 – for those employees who worked 80 hours or more in any reference period. In Quarter 3, they must be paid at least $1,200 per JobKeeper fortnight. In Quarter 4, they must be paid at least $1,000 per JobKeeper fortnight. If these employees are paid less than these amounts, a top-up payment must be made to the specified amounts and reported, as per the current reporting arrangements for JobKeeper top-up payments.
• JK-TIER2 - for those employees who worked fewer than 80 hours in any reference period. In Quarter 3, they must be paid at least $750 per JobKeeper fortnight. In Quarter 4, they must be paid at least $650 per JobKeeper fortnight. If these employees are paid less than these amounts, a top-up payment must be made to the specified amounts and reported, as per the current reporting arrangements for JobKeeper top-up payments.

Setting the Tier Level in Minder

In Payroll

Open

• Tools

  • Reload Super / jobKeeper Setup

Click on 'JK Extension Payment - Set Tier Levels

This MAY NOT BE CORRECT, and needs to be checked.

Open

To Check the Tier Level set.

• Payroll

  Maintenence

  • JobKeeper

You can see the JobKeeper Tier that has been set. To correct just clink on ‘Change’

• Set to '1' for TIER1 – for those employees who worked 80 hours or more in any reference period.

• Set to '2' for TIER2 - for those employees who worked fewer than 80 hours in any reference period.

If an employee does not have a ‘StartFN’, they will not have a Tier level either.

That’s it, nothing more needs to be done in Minder for JobKeeper Extension.

Authority

The only authority on JobKeeper & Corvid-19 as it relates to businesses is the ATO =>

• https://www.ato.gov.au/General/JobKeeper-Payment/

• https://www.ato.gov.au/General/COVID-19/

Using their myGovID, eligible employers or their authorised agent can enrol for the JobKeeper payment from Monday 20 April via:

• ATO Business Portal,

• Online Services for Agents or

• Online Services for Individuals in the case of sole traders.

The Process:-

Step 1.

Do you Qualify?

Detailed information about the two types of turnover test can be found on the ATO website. The legislative instrument for the alternative test isn’t currently available but this will be updated in the coming days.

• Basic test

• Alternative test

Important Points

• Once you qualify as an employer, you stay qualified to receive JobKeeper, even if your business improves.

• You may qualify and start at a later date, ie April & May are OK, June won’t be. You can start claiming for June.

• ‘One in All in’. You cannot pick and choose which employee’s receive JobKeeper. If you qualify and your employee also qualifies, then they MUST receive $1500 per fortnight.

• You now have until the 8th May to claim for April (was the 30th April). BUT you must have made any Top Up payments by that date.

Registration

You need to register with the ATO (normally via the ATO Business Portal) in order to claim. You can register from 20th April onwards. You should register before the end of April if you are claiming any moneys in April.

• https://bp.ato.gov.au/

Step 2.

Employee Nomination Notice

The ‘JobKeeper employee nomination notice’ (available on the ATO website) must be completed and be retained by the employer.

• https://www.ato.gov.au/Forms/JobKeeper-payment---employee-nomination-notice/

You may send this out via email from within the Pay module of Minder. This will be the easiest way to distribute the form to your employees.

A field on the new JobKeeper maintenance screen is available to keep track of the returns. The returns are not sent to the ATO, but must be available should the ATO decide to investigate a particular employee.

Sending Nomination forms to Employees (from within Minder)

We are using a form that can be sent the same way you do the Payslip email run.

• Pay

• PayRun

• PaySlips

The Payslip screen will Open:-

• Change the Format to # 3

• make sure the Pay Period is valid (use the last pay period)

• Change (copy / paste) the Subject Line (see text below)

  • SUBJECT:

JobKeeper Nomination Form -

• Change (copy / paste) the Email Message (see text below)

Please find attached the Employee Nomination Notice form that needs to be completed and returned to the Payroll Office.

The company may decide to participate in the JobKeeper scheme, a condition of this scheme is that the employee Nominates to participate.

By nominating you are agreeing that you meet the conditions listed.

You can return this form by Replying to this email, with a YES or NO at the end of the subject line.

• Click on Email

The email & the Nomination Notice will be sent to your employees.

Sample Nomination Notice from within Minder.

Step 3

Setup The JobKeeper Master File.

We are maintaining a separate table in the Payroll system to hold the employee’s JobKeeper information.

This needs to be setup (initialised), and is done from within the Payroll System.

Payroll

This opens the Setup Screen, Click on ‘Create JobKeeper File’.

The JobKeeper Table has now been populated with your employee’s details.

If you try and run it a second time, you will get the following message.

Close the Setup Screen.

You can now view the JobKeeper Maintenance Screen

JobKeeper Maintenance Screen

Pay

If an Employee failed one of the Validation checks

• permanent full-time or part-time employee at 1 March 2020

• long-term casual employee (employed on a regular and systematic basis for at least 12 months) as at 1 March 2020 and not a permanent employee of any other employer 

• were aged 16 years or older at 1 March 2020

You CAN overwrite this status, the system is only as good as the data in the Payroll.

Help Link

The JobKeeper Maintenance screen has a Help link back to this document.

Fields

Number of Eligible Employees

You will need to report the number of Eligible Employees when you submit to the ATO your claim and estimates for the following months turn-over (This is done via the ATO Business Portal).

The number of Eligible employee’s is shown at the bottom of the JobKeeper Maintenance screen.

Step 4

Setting the Starting Fortnight

As an employer, you will receive a payment from the ATO of $1,500 per employee per fortnight as long as you and your employees meet the eligibility criteria.

Eligible employers must pay their eligible employees at least $1,500 per fortnight for paydays on or after 30 March.

For the transition into the JobKeeper payment, the employer can retrospectively apply this payment for paydays on or after 30 March by the end of April.

For payroll cycles, pay the $1,500 for each fixed JobKeeper fortnightly period where:

Weekly pays

$1,500 across the paydays within each JobKeeper fortnight period, including any out of cycle payments.

Example:

if weekly payday is on Wednesdays, then there are 2 paydays (1/4 and 8/4) within Fortnight 01, so total pay per eligible employee must be at least $1,500 for those 2 pays. It may be evenly split ($750/pay) or the second pay must make up at least the total $1,500 ($400 then $1,100)

Fortnightly pays

$1,500 for the paydays within each JobKeeper fortnight period, including any out of cycle payments

Monthly pays

at least $1500 for each full JobKeeper fortnight within the month. This will be $3000 for each month except August. The employer may choose to pay $3,250 each month, but reimbursements are based only upon complete fortnights per month

Other frequencies

ensuring that the paydays that fall within the fortnight include a payment of at least $1,500 per fortnight.

Example In Minder

The Jobkeeper Start Fortnight is therefore 01.

This would be irrespective of weekly, fornightly or monthly pay cycles.

Setting the Start Fortnight (StartFN)

• Payroll

• Tools

• Reload Super / JobKeeper Setup

Select the Start Fortnight by clicking the '…' (dot-dot) box.

Ensure that the correct Start Fortnight is selected, and double click that line. The number in the FN box will have changed to reflect the Selection.

Now click on ‘Start Fortnight Populate’

Minder will now popular all Eligible employees in the Jobkeeper Maintenance screen.

Notice that the Not Eligible employee does not have a Start FN entry.

Procedure is complete, nothing more is required within Minder for JobKeeper.

Other Scenarios

Later StartFN

• You are not claiming for April (things were OK), but will likely need to claim in May.

• From the table above, we can determine that the StartFN will be FN03.

• Proceed as per the above procedure.

Employee has a StartFN, but has declared themselves ‘Not Eligible’

The ATO anticipated this. Simply Enter a FinishFN the same at the StartFN. This will cancel their entry.

Step 5. Running the Payroll

A Payrun proceeds as normal, with the following notes:-

Minimum Payments for JobKeeper.

Check this BEFORE Closing the Pay Period.

• Weekly :- $750

• Fortnightly:- $1500

• Monthly:- $3000 (except for August which is $4500)

From the Pay Report (PAFMT3) determine that you have reached the minimum GROSS for ALL eligible employees, for casuals this may mean they get a pay rise.

We can see that Employee 192 and 201 do not meet the minimum Payment Requirement.

You will need to ‘Top Up’ their pays. This is done through a special Allowance.

Top Up Payments

You are required to bring all employee’s up to a minimum $1500 Gross per fortnight, $750 per week. To do this we have a special allowance for this ‘Top Up’. JOBKEEPER-TOPUP

Editing the Pays for those employees, we manually add the extra.

And we now have $750 gross.

April Only - Catch Up

If you are claiming the full amount for April, and you HAVE NOT paid everyone the minimum $3000 for the month ($1500 x 2 fortnights) you will need to do a PayRun 2 to bring these employee’s up to the minimum. This has to happen BEFORE the end of April.

Completing the Payroll

Once you have made the adjustments you can continue the Payroll process as normal:-

• EFT Run

• Payslips

• Post & Advance Pays

• Single Touch Payroll

Summary

JobKeeper has been a massive undertaking by the ATO which has been delivered in an impossible time-frame. As a result it's design does not support multiple corrections, so extreme caution should be taken to ensure accuracy of originally reported JobKeeper data. This critical detail is used to determine reimbursement to the employer.