Wage Subsidy Scheme Issues

RandomViewer wrote: »

The top up requirment being voluntary only applies if you arent working, the idea is the subsidy 70% to 85% of previous wage plus top up to make up the difference, if you are working 50 hours thats €500 minimum, should be overtime rate for 11 hours too

It also applies if you are working unfortunately.

RandomViewer wrote: »

Ive been doing 2 weeks on ,2 weeks off, get Covid subsidy for off weeks and subsidy plus top up for worked week,
You need to bring this up employer or complain to Revenue or WRC

The rules of the scheme don’t require the employer to top-up.

IMO any employer who can afford to do so should be topping up - especially if asking people to continue working - but the rules don’t require them to do so.

RandomViewer wrote: »

If he has you working he has to tell revenue, t

I don’t think so

Our company has told us only a small percentage of staff qualify for the wage subsidy scheme. I find this hard to believe, I took a 30% pay cut and am in the top quartile in terms of salary in the company. According to the collsoft calculator, I should be eligible to receive the subsidy, therefore, 3/4 (minimum) of staff should be on it.

I raised this with the company and asked how they determine who can and can't get the subsidy.

Hi all, for those working on twss the past few months can I ask have you found it particularly difficult and alot lot more time consuming? I used to work payroll for many years and know whats generally involved though obviously dont have first hand experience on this pandemic issue. My colleague has said it is taking up 3 days of his time to get it done and I cant understand that. There are 6 employees still on normal pay, not affected at all ,and 5 employees on twss. Everyone else has been laid off. Does this really take that much time? thanks

Pistachio19 wrote: »

Sounds a bit much. Does he have a payroll package or is he working it out himself? We have a payroll package and it gives the TWSS and top up figures we should be paying each employee, so for us there is very little work involved. Even if we were working it out ourselves I cannot imagine it would take 3 days to figure it out.

Has the Sage package. I can understand the first few weeks but at this stage I though it would be pretty straight forward. And plus there are no timesheets or anything to do as everyone still in employment is on same pay each week. Anyway just wondered was it the norm, cheers

snowgal wrote: »

Hi all, for those working on twss the past few months can I ask have you found it particularly difficult and alot lot more time consuming? I used to work payroll for many years and know whats generally involved though obviously dont have first hand experience on this pandemic issue. My colleague has said it is taking up 3 days of his time to get it done and I cant understand that. There are 6 employees still on normal pay, not affected at all ,and 5 employees on twss. Everyone else has been laid off. Does this really take that much time? thanks

snowgal wrote: »

Has the Sage package. I can understand the first few weeks but at this stage I though it would be pretty straight forward. And plus there are no timesheets or anything to do as everyone still in employment is on same pay each week. Anyway just wondered was it the norm, cheers

i use sage myself. first few weeks were tricky with the messing and new system.
since then it is easier than ever. it is basically a flat week for everyone, if it is all set up properly it is no more than clicking the mouse a few times in sequential processing and it's done.

so your colleague is taking 3 days to process payroll for 11 people? honestly that should take about 10 minutes...... and that is being generous, probably more like 5, and the slowest part would be getting the bank file processed!
sounds to me like someone is swinging the lead here

blackwhite wrote: »

Under the changes since the start of May - any employee is eligible to be included in the scheme.

However, if the employee's ARNWP in Jan/Feb was greater than €960, then to be eligible for the scheme their pay must be cut so that their total WSS Subsidy plus Top-up is €960 or less.

This is the case yet most people aren't on it. I think they have messed it up, meaning there have been unnecessary pay cuts and job losses.

Seve OB wrote: »

have an employee due back the week after next from maternity leave.
we are just going to put her on the covid payment along with everyone else.
nothing on the csv import file for her.
does anyone know the protocol here?

Info on ROS today relating to maternity leave.

fungie wrote: »

Our company has told us only a small percentage of staff qualify for the wage subsidy scheme. I find this hard to believe, I took a 30% pay cut and am in the top quartile in terms of salary in the company. According to the collsoft calculator, I should be eligible to receive the subsidy, therefore, 3/4 (minimum) of staff should be on it.

I raised this with the company and asked how they determine who can and can't get the subsidy.

If turnover has dropped more than 25% then everyone can get it, there are over 150 people on it where I work including middle management, only a few key people arent affected,

Hi Fungie,

Hopefully our calculator didnt make a mistake

For any employee with an ARNWP of €586 per week (€2539 per month) or more there are two criteria that makes them eligible for the scheme;

1) The Gross Pay from the employer must be less than €960 per week (€4160 per month)

2) The Gross Pay must be at least 20% less than the ARNWP.


When you say that your pay has dropped by 30%, I assume that you mean that your Gross pay is now 30% less than it was before the COVID pandemic.

You need to check that your current Gross Pay is also at least 20% lower than your ARNWP.

This can be difficult to achieve for some employees because the ARNWP is essentially a net pay figure (after all taxes) whereas the Gross pay is obviously the pay before taxes.

Perhaps your employer is not understanding this while assessing who is eligible.

fungie wrote: »

Our company has told us only a small percentage of staff qualify for the wage subsidy scheme. I find this hard to believe, I took a 30% pay cut and am in the top quartile in terms of salary in the company. According to the collsoft calculator, I should be eligible to receive the subsidy, therefore, 3/4 (minimum) of staff should be on it.

I raised this with the company and asked how they determine who can and can't get the subsidy.

blackwhite wrote: »

Under the changes since the start of May - any employee is eligible to be included in the scheme.

However, if the employee's ARNWP in Jan/Feb was greater than €960, then to be eligible for the scheme their pay must be cut so that their total WSS Subsidy plus Top-up is €960 or less.

Hi BlackWhite,

Im pretty sure I know what "Gross Pay" is and I never said it included the Subsidy.

For some reason Revenue dont like calling it an "Employer Top Up" and instead they call it an "additional gross payment" in section 1.6 - I shorten that down to "Gross Pay"

This amount is reported as "Gross Pay" on the Payroll Submission that the employer makes to Revenue and this is the figure that Revenue use to determine the subsidy, tapering and indeed eligibility for those on a tiered subsidy.

I also call it "Gross Pay" to help keep the terminology in line with anything that an employer/employee would see if they logged into ROS or myAccount.

I have attached a screenshot of how you will see it in myAccount, and as you will see it's called "Gross Pay".

Its also likely to be called that at some point on the employee's payslip so i am just trying to use a language that most people can relate to.

blackwhite wrote: »

You’re confusing the use of the term “Gross Pay” there. Under the scheme rules “Gross Pay” is the top-up amount; the Subsidy is not part of Gross Pay.

The “Gross Pay” plus the TWSS subsidy cannot be more than the lower of €960 or ARNWP (except for very low earners)


EDIT - just to add - the 20% “pay cut” requirement for anyone earning over €960 is misleading. Revenue define the pay cut as on Gross Pay - so anyone switching from earning over €960 to being on the subsidy scheme plus a top up to a overall total of €960 will always meet the requirement - due to the subsidy not being counted in gross pay.

collsoft wrote: »

Hi Fungie,

Hopefully our calculator didnt make a mistake

For any employee with an ARNWP of €586 per week (€2539 per month) or more there are two criteria that makes them eligible for the scheme;

1) The Gross Pay from the employer must be less than €960 per week (€4160 per month)

2) The Gross Pay must be at least 20% less than the ARNWP.


When you say that your pay has dropped by 30%, I assume that you mean that your Gross pay is now 30% less than it was before the COVID pandemic.

You need to check that your current Gross Pay is also at least 20% lower than your ARNWP.

This can be difficult to achieve for some employees because the ARNWP is essentially a net pay figure (after all taxes) whereas the Gross pay is obviously the pay before taxes.

Perhaps your employer is not understanding this while assessing who is eligible.

In Jan-Feb this year my ARNWP was 968 (calculated by dividing jan and febs net salary and dividing by 8). My pay now (gross) is 70% of what it was before covid, i.e. 30% pay cut.

My take home pay for May was 25% less than my take home pay for the Jan-Feb period. My pension contributions have stayed the same, calculated as a percentage of my gross Jan-Feb salary.

There is no mention of wage subsidy scheme so can only assume employer is paying all the amount.

Should I qualify or not?

Renjit wrote: »

Guys, just a quick question about wage subsidy payment.

My wife's Average Revenue Net Weekly Pay was calculated based on year's first 9 weeks pay (Jan to Feb). And it happens that the first week had couple of holidays (new year, and employer on leave too). Because of first week the Average Revenue Net Weekly Pay is less than her actual weekly payments.

This seems a bit odd to me that government hasn't factored this in. One should be taking the regular weekly payment as stipulated in contract in Jan and Feb for the calculation.

The employer has regular working hours now and even asking for doing extra hours because one of the employee is on temporary leave due to personal reasons. So there is no dearth of customers right now. Earlier she was getting 350 weekly as pandemic employment benefit. And here she gets 350 + some odd 40-50 euros topup which doesn't even match the normal weekly payments. The employer doesnt want to top up to match the actual weekly payment because this will reduce the subsidy calculated on reduced first week + remaining actual work weeks.

there are a lot of flaws and nonsensical rules in this system but it is what it is and some people are being hard done by as a result

Fair enough BlackWhite,

I do make mistakes sometimes, and when I do, and I realise it I come back and acknowledge it - I never claim to be perfect. I can also say that I have sometimes misread users posts, and when I do and I realise it I do come back and acknowledge it.

But I still disagree with your point that I am mixing up Gross Pay with the Subsidy, and I think there might be an element of you misreading people's questions/answers, and indeed you are mixing up eligiblity with tapering. Tapering is a function of both the Gross Pay and the Subsidy and it acts to ensure that Pay + Subsidy cant exceed €960 - but it doesnt occur if you are not eligible in the first place.

The question from fungie was about eligibility for the wage subsidy - nothing else.

My first point was

"1) The Gross Pay from the employer must be less than €960 per week (€4160 per month)"

I stick by that, and just to be clear I am talking about Gross Pay only here, and I am not talking about the subsidy in any way what so ever.

To be fair, i didnt explain that Gross Pay is your Pay before any allowable tax deductions such pensions, and is inclusive of BIK. You are allowed to reduce it by any salary sacrifices such as "Bike To Work" or "Tax Saver Travel Tickets".

Revenue have published a list of reasons why they reject ineligible subsidy claims from employers - see section 5.6 of the FAQ for the full list of rejection reasons.

Specifically in 5.6.8 they list "Subsidy not payable as gross pay exceeded the €960 threshold"

Also, in 5.6.7 they state another rejection reason as "Subsidy not payable as gross pay greater than 80% of ARNWP"

Now this is exactly what I said in my answer, so obviously Revenue don't know what they are talking about when they talk about Gross Pay either.

BlackWhite, in your postscript to your post you stated that "EDIT - just to add - the 20% “pay cut” requirement for anyone earning over €960 is misleading. Revenue define the pay cut as on Gross Pay - so anyone switching from earning over €960 to being on the subsidy scheme plus a top up to a overall total of €960 will always meet the requirement - due to the subsidy not being counted in gross pay."

That is simply incorrect. The cut to Gross Pay is always measured against the ARNWP, not the Gross Pay as you stated. Again, I would refer to section 5.6.7 of the Revenue FAQ which states that you are ineligible if your current Gross Pay is more than 80% of your ARNWP (or has not fallen by more than 20% below it)

Also, refer to section 4.17 which deals with cases where "For ARNWP more than €960, and current gross pay is below €960 per week".

Part 3 of this section clearly states that "Where the employee’s current gross pay, as reported in the payroll submission, represents - more than 80% of the ARNWP, no subsidy is payable and J9 PRSI class should not be applied (this is Tier 3)"

Now if you read fungie's folow up post you will see that his ARNWP is €968. That means that his current Gross Pay has to fall to below €774.40 (€968 @ 80%) in order to qualify for the subsidy (20% below ARNWP). I dont know what his actual Gross Pay was beofe, but I am pretty sure that his Gross Pay will have to have fallen a lot more than 20% in order to bring it below €774.40

Now I appreciate that I may have been given some latitude with posts, but I think its fair to say that I have always been up front and honest about who I am and what my background is.

My reason for posting here has been to try and help people with the scheme, plain and simple, and most of my posts were during a time where there was great uncertaintely and very little information.

I take great offence at being described as a "Shill" - A Shill is "an accomplice of a hawker, gambler or swindler who acts as an enthusiastic customer to entice or encourage others" - I have always been upfront about who I am and I have never tried to pretend otherwise, but perhaps again Im not reading your post correctly.

blackwhite wrote: »

Except - you’ve used the phrase “gross pay” to mean two different things in your explanation. So maybe you don’t know what it means as well as you think you do :pac:

In your point 1 - you’ve used Gross Pay to mean Subsidy plus Top-Up (the bit than must be less than €960 in total)

In point 2 you use the phrase Gross Pay to refer to the top up (which must be at least 20% reduced from the ARNWP


I was pointing out that you’ve managed to use the same phrase to mean two completely different things - and you’re response is to be condescending?


For someone who’s being given a hell of a lot of leeway with the site rules to shill his product, you aren’t the best at reading people’s (who might be potential customers) responses.