Wage Subsidy Scheme Issues

PickYourName

On something totally different, we were somewhat alarmed to discover the EWSS payment hadn't been made for last week and there was no statement either.

I just rang Revenue, who said that there had been a delay due to the way the dates for the end of the month worked out.

Both statements and payments should issue tomorrow.

Seve OB

Seve OB wrote: »

just came on to post that i got a load of warnings when doing my submission, EWSS can only be claimed between 1 sept & 31 march.
was still allowed to submit.

never got an email from sage though

same warnings this week

Kerrytony77

Hi All.

Quick question, Do your employer have inform you if the company is claiming a ewss payment for you.

I’m thinking if they are getting a state payment using your Name and pps number they should inform you on this.

Seve OB

Kerrytony77 wrote: »

Hi All.

Quick question, Do your employer have inform you if the company is claiming a ewss payment for you.

I’m thinking if they are getting a state payment using your Name and pps number they should inform you on this.

No.
As an employee it’s none of your business what subsidies your employer claims.
All you need to worry about is that your wage slip is correct

PickYourName

Kerrytony77 wrote: »

Hi All.

Quick question, Do your employer have inform you if the company is claiming a ewss payment for you.

I’m thinking if they are getting a state payment using your Name and pps number they should inform you on this.

The short answer is no. The EWSS is an employer payment, not an employee one. Your employer exchanges all sorts of information with Revenue relating to you.

However, do Revenue publish a list of employers that have received payments under the scheme, at:

https://www.revenue.ie/en/employing-people/ewss/list-of-employers-who-received-payments-in-2020-under-the-ewss.aspx

Also, depending on how they are claiming for it, the information might show up if you made a GDPR request to your employer, though that's a pretty extreme thing to do.

Why do you want to know?

Seve OB

I’m confused.
Have a company for which I’m trying to reconcile TWSS.
They owe money.
Basically 6 guys for 2 weeks in July. Payslips were not done in a way to claim the subsidy. It wasn’t paid.
Looks like reconciliation file was uploaded to ROS back in September detailing all the subsidies paid out.
These payments were not on the upload.
Subsidy was paid into the bank in December. I have no idea how the revenue would have known to pay these amounts.
The reconciliation which I downloaded today includes these payments but in the column for subsidy paid to employee, it says unreported.
It’s 6pm, my brain is fried, will probably make calls to revenue new to week to see if I can figure out how and why they paid these out.

Really the subsidy should have been claimed, I think in general the payroll clerk at the time might not have had their head around how to operate the subsidies and take advantage of them......... and in fairness who could blame them, it was a mess.

It’s actually odder because these guys had other payments in following weeks done the same ( as in subsidy not claimed on payslips and not J9).
No subsequent claim or payout for these ones.

Any ideas that I can muse on over the weekend?

collsoft

Hi Seve_OB,

I dont suppose these six guys happen to be apprentices?

Initially apprentices and some women who were on maternity leave didnt qualify for TWSS because they didnt have a payroll footprint in Feb 2020.

However changes were made to enable these employees to be brought into TWSS but there was a separate process for them, and Revenue have a kind of a sweepback process that paid the lost TWSS to the employer - that could explain the December payment.

Anyway, I am guessing here.

But if it is the case then what you will need to do is report that zero TWSS was actually paid to the employees in question.

This is so Revenue know that no TWSS was actually paid to them and that the employee's don't owe any additional tax.

These unreported "zeros" are what is holding back you being able to accept the reconciliation.

Anyway - just a wild guess, but hope it makes some sense

Jason

Seve OB wrote: »

I’m confused.
Have a company for which I’m trying to reconcile TWSS.
They owe money.
Basically 6 guys for 2 weeks in July. Payslips were not done in a way to claim the subsidy. It wasn’t paid.
Looks like reconciliation file was uploaded to ROS back in September detailing all the subsidies paid out.
These payments were not on the upload.
Subsidy was paid into the bank in December. I have no idea how the revenue would have known to pay these amounts.
The reconciliation which I downloaded today includes these payments but in the column for subsidy paid to employee, it says unreported.
It’s 6pm, my brain is fried, will probably make calls to revenue new to week to see if I can figure out how and why they paid these out.

Really the subsidy should have been claimed, I think in general the payroll clerk at the time might not have had their head around how to operate the subsidies and take advantage of them......... and in fairness who could blame them, it was a mess.

It’s actually odder because these guys had other payments in following weeks done the same ( as in subsidy not claimed on payslips and not J9).
No subsequent claim or payout for these ones.

Any ideas that I can muse on over the weekend?

Seve OB

collsoft wrote: »

Hi Seve_OB,

I dont suppose these six guys happen to be apprentices?

Initially apprentices and some women who were on maternity leave didnt qualify for TWSS because they didnt have a payroll footprint in Feb 2020.

However changes were made to enable these employees to be brought into TWSS but there was a separate process for them, and Revenue have a kind of a sweepback process that paid the lost TWSS to the employer - that could explain the December payment.

Anyway, I am guessing here.

But if it is the case then what you will need to do is report that zero TWSS was actually paid to the employees in question.

This is so Revenue know that no TWSS was actually paid to them and that the employee's don't owe any additional tax.

These unreported "zeros" are what is holding back you being able to accept the reconciliation.

Anyway - just a wild guess, but hope it makes some sense

Jason

Unlikely they are apprentices. But it could well be something like that. Restaurant staff and it was the first 2 weeks back open. I’ll dig deeper next week when I’m back there and report my findings

Green Mile

Hi,

I genuinely believed I submitted TWSS data to revenue correctly so I thought I didn’t have to do a reconciliation but reviewing the revenue portal, I see a liability.

I just have some rookie questions if I may!

On the attached TWSS rec’ from Revenue, what is marked in Blue is what I have on the payslips (using March 2020, for example). Am I correct in understanding that this wasn’t recorded properly with Revenue as they are showing a different value in the column I’ve marked in yellow?

Using the Sample file also attached, I just need to copy over the same data and enter the blue values under SubsidyPaid column? I can leave the ARNWP blank?

mogilvie

Green Mile wrote: »

Hi,

I genuinely believed I submitted TWSS data to revenue correctly so I thought I didn’t have to do a reconciliation but reviewing the revenue portal, I see a liability.

Submitting the data to Revenue (either via PSR resubmission, or via TWSS CSV file upload) was Stage 1 of TWSS reconciliation. Stage 1 was all about Revenue understanding what the employer actually did.

Stage 2 of TWSS reconciliation is the process of Revenue balancing the books using their own set of calculations, and taking account of monies paid already, to establish any over or under payment of subsidy from Revenue to the Employer. Remember that up to 3rd May the Govt. paid a flat 410 euro per week to each eligible employee. With the proviso that the employer should calculate the subsidy required and ring fence the difference for repayment back to Revenue.

Everyone who ran TWSS must complete Stage 2 of reconciliation, unless you're being assisted by a case officer, in which case you go into a different workflow.

Green Mile wrote: »

On the attached TWSS rec’ from Revenue, what is marked in Blue is what I have on the payslips (using March 2020, for example). Am I correct in understanding that this wasn’t recorded properly with Revenue as they are showing a different value in the column I’ve marked in yellow?

Just to recap for any others reading, the definitions of the columns can be found in the revenue guidance docs in Section 5.4 page 19: https://www.revenue.ie/en/employing-people/documents/twss/twss-reconciliation-employer-guidance.pdf

The SubsidyPaid column is what was reported to Revenue. Either via the Stage 1 TWSS reconciliation CSV file upload, or over the Payroll Submission Request if submissions were made via software.

The cells in blue (Subsidy Payable) are what Revenue believe the employee was entitled to.

The cells in yellow (Reconciliation Subsidy) are the lowest of the Subsidy Paid or Subsidy Payable. So if you reported no subsidy actually paid to the employee, then that is the value used for reconciliation.  If you calculated a higher value, and over paid the subsidy to the employee, then the reconciliation subsidy is the value that Revenue calculate.

TWSS Total is the money actually paid to the employer.

The Reconciled Balance is what Revenue want back from the employer.

While you may have value on your payslip, and a J9 in the PRSI Code, the PSR that was sent to revenue might not have had an Other Payments with a matching amount. It may have been 0.

As you a submitted TWSS CSV in Stage 1, the subsidy might be misreported.

Another possibility, if you've made a re submission of a payslip via software with 0 for OtherPayments COVID field after the date that you sent in your TWSS Rec CSV file.

I would suggest you look at the PSR's on ROS for those payslips look at the value in the Other Payments COVID field. Compare that against your TWSS CSV reconciliation file. Look at the dates. Then respond to Revenue with evidence of the payslips and good explanation of events and timelines. They've been pretty reasonable with all the interactions I've had with them on TWSS.

collsoft

Hi Greenmile,

Its actually Column G in your spreadsheet that is driving this.

Column G is what you have reported to Revenue as the amount of TWSS that you actually paid your employees.

You can see in the last 3 lines that you have reported that you paid zero to your employees, therefore Revenue are looking to take the subsidy back off you for these 3 payslips.

I know that you did actually report this otherwise it would say "Unreported" in column G for those lines.

You mentioned that the figures in Blue (Column K) match what you actually paid the employees on their payslip - you need to report this as what you have paid them.

if its only these 3 payslips then the best thing to do is just go onto ROS and report them under the "Other Payments" section of each payslip.

Then when you download an updated TWSS CSV file from Revenue it will show this amount and you will only have to pay the small balance to make up €1640

Hope this makes sense

Green Mile wrote: »

Hi,

I genuinely believed I submitted TWSS data to revenue correctly so I thought I didn’t have to do a reconciliation but reviewing the revenue portal, I see a liability.

I just have some rookie questions if I may!

On the attached TWSS rec’ from Revenue, what is marked in Blue is what I have on the payslips (using March 2020, for example). Am I correct in understanding that this wasn’t recorded properly with Revenue as they are showing a different value in the column I’ve marked in yellow?

Using the Sample file also attached, I just need to copy over the same data and enter the blue values under SubsidyPaid column? I can leave the ARNWP blank?

Green Mile

collsoft wrote: »

if its only these 3 payslips then the best thing to do is just go onto ROS and report them under the "Other Payments" section of each payslip.

Thanks for coming back to me. There’s actually thousands of lines, not just the 3 from the snippet.

I just need to upload the attached template and key in the blue highlighted values into column G into the attached (along with the other columns per revenues TWSS rec’)?

I can leave out the first line on my file as that has balanced? Or should include everything?

collsoft

Ok Green mile - I guess I was being optimistic!!!!

Strictly speaking you only need to update the lines where the amount of "subsidyPaid" (Column G) does not match what you actually paid them.

However, there is no problem if you re-report the whole thing again either.

Im going to guess that you were using Payroll software to generate the first CSV file for Revenue some time last year?

If so, then I think this problem has occurred because your software is not configured correctly - you have not identified that the pay element in your software was TWSS, and when it generated the CSV file for upload to Revenue it reported zero because there was not TWSS pay element - your payroll software company should be able to help you fix this, and then you can generate a new file and upload it to Revenue again.


Now you can go ahead and prepare your own CSV file for upload, but its not a matter of simply filling the data into Column G of the file you have from Revenue.

The file that you need to upload is in a different format, but it is simple enough to create if you want - but only if you are comfortable with doing it (I would suggest trying your software company first though).

I have attached a screenshot showing what the file looks like

Column C (Employer Ref) and Column H (ARNWP) are optional so you can leave them blank.

All other columns must be populated with your data and you can copy this data from the CSV reconciliation file that you downloaded.

The specification for this file is available from the Revenue GitHub page at here>>

There is a blank example of this file at here>>

And there is a sample file with fake data here>>


Look, the file is simple enough, and if you are confident in Excel you can do it easily enough - but I would again suggest you might be better to contact your payroll software support line and get help to fix it up in your software.

Hope this helps,

Jason

Green Mile wrote: »

Thanks for coming back to me. There’s actually thousands of lines, not just the 3 from the snippet.

I just need to upload the attached template and key in the blue highlighted values into column G into the attached (along with the other columns per revenues TWSS rec’)?

I can leave out the first line on my file as that has balanced? Or should include everything?

collsoft

Sorry, I didnt see your attached picture.

Yes, that's the file that you need to upload and you can ignore Columns C and H as they are optional (see the specs I linked in my last post)

But yes, that is exactly what you need to upload, and it doesnt matter if you include everybody or just the ones that were wrong.

When you upload one of these files it over-writes whatever was previously on Revenue, so if you send the same value again it just stays the same (it doesn't double up)

Jason

Green Mile wrote: »

Thanks for coming back to me. There’s actually thousands of lines, not just the 3 from the snippet.

I just need to upload the attached template and key in the blue highlighted values into column G into the attached (along with the other columns per revenues TWSS rec’)?

I can leave out the first line on my file as that has balanced? Or should include everything?

Green Mile

Thanks Jason,
I’ve managed to upload the csv template today, it went very smoothly.

opinionated3

Hi all. My wife returned to full time hours this week( she works in non essential retail). Her boss gave her her pay slip today, but said that she had no tax credits therefore she is taxed to the brim. But said that it should even out next week. I've no idea what he means by this. We share tax credits as a married couple so I've no idea what's going on here. Can anyone explain?

Dempo1

opinionated3 wrote: »

Hi all. My wife returned to full time hours this week( she works in non essential retail). Her boss gave her her pay slip today, but said that she had no tax credits therefore she is taxed to the brim. But said that it should even out next week. I've no idea what he means by this. We share tax credits as a married couple so I've no idea what's going on here. Can anyone explain?

Was she on PUP or wage subsidy scheme? If it was PUP recepients have been put on week 1 for taxation purposes and emergency tax being applied, the issue is delays from SW informing Revenue PUP closed, not sure if making contact with SW or Revenue directly my expedite a resolution. I should also mention Revenue are reducing Tax free allowance in order to help pup recepients pay any tax liability built up from pup for tax year 2021. Not sure how this works for couples sharing TFA

If she was on a wage subsidy scheme I'll leave that to more experienced contrubutors on this excellent Thread

opinionated3

Dempo1 wrote: »

Was she on PUP or wage subsidy scheme? If it was PUP recepients have been put on week 1 for taxation purposes and emergency tax being applied, the issue is delays from SW informing Revenue PUP closed, not sure if making contact with SW or Revenue directly my expedite a resolution. I should also mention Revenue are reducing Tax free allowance in order to help pup recepients pay any tax liability built up from pup for tax year 2021. Not sure how this works for couples sharing TFA

If she was on a wage subsidy scheme I'll leave that to more experienced contrubutors on this excellent Thread

Thanks very much for your reply. She was on the PUP. So I'm assuming once that delay you referred to is sorted, she should return to normal taxation?

Dempo1

opinionated3 wrote: »

Thanks very much for your reply. She was on the PUP. So I'm assuming once that delay you referred to is sorted, she should return to normal taxation?

Ah, yes, I tho she was on PUP, glad she's back to normal hours. On other threads I've spotted the delay issue and I assume yes it will resolve quickly but might not be a bad idea for her to make a quick call to revenue or do a my query on her my gov account if she has one, good luck

collsoft

As Dempo1 advised, the issue is because of PUP, and it will resolve itself in a couple of weeks.

I know that your wife is being heavily taxed in her wages this week, but Im pretty sure that she will still actually be receiving a PUP payment into her bank account from Social Welfare as well which should even things out for here.

Just to mention, the social welfare week runs from Friday - Thursday.

So, if your wife started back to work this Monday, then she is also entitled to a full week of PUP because technically she was still on PUP last Friday.

That's one of the reasons why PUP claims dont get closed until a few weeks after you go back to work.

When the final PUP payment is made to your Wife then Social Welfare will close her claim and inform Revenue. Then revenue will recalculate your wife's credits going forward.

Hope that helps to explain it a little

opinionated3 wrote: »

Thanks very much for your reply. She was on the PUP. So I'm assuming once that delay you referred to is sorted, she should return to normal taxation?

BROGAY

Pistachio19 wrote: »

Trying to do TWSS Reconciliation. I have uploaded the CSV file from our payroll to ROS but out of 20 items, 8 are invalid - main reason being 'The subsidy detail PPSN does not match the PPSN on the referenced payslip' and one with 'The payslip referenced in the subsidy data does not include an Employee ID'. The invalid ones are from July/August payroll while April - June are all valid. I cannot see any difference in the data apart from the fact that July and August were on a week 1 basis. PPSN are the same, ID are the same. I'm a bit flummoxed.

Hi Pistachio

Did you manage to resolve this issue? I am having the same issue uploading onto ROS. out of 300 lines 100 is working fine but the other 200 is coming up with "The subsidy detail PPSN does not match the PPSN on the referenced payslip" error.
I have tried to contact ROS to explain but the only answer I get out of them is to refer back to the TWSS reconcilliation guide which is absolutely useless.
The PPSN numbers cannot be wrong as the ones successfully loaded are using the same values.

shatners bassoon

I'm being advised by Revenue to amend our February 2020 payroll submission having been told all along not to do so as this would make the affected employees ineligible for TWSS.

Were the rules on amendment changed does anyone know?

collsoft

I am going to warn you very strongly against making any changes to any January or February 2020 Payslips - FULL STOP.

I admit that I do not know any of your circumstances at all, but I can tell you this - Your employee's eligibility for TWSS is based on Jan and/or February 2020 Payslips, and when they were submitted or amended on ROS.

At the very least your February 2020 Payslips must have been submitted before 1st April - if you amend these payslips now you will not meet this requirement. In some cases the payslip needs to have been submitted before 15th March 2020 - think very carefully before you change anything now.

If you amend these payslips now, then you run the risk of TWSS payments between 26th March 2020 and 3rd May 2020 (The temporary phase) being rendered ineligible for refund by Revenue.

I have plenty of clients who now have been told that they are not entitled to TWSS in the temporary phase because they amended their Jan/Feb Payslips.

Please read Section 5.3 on Payslip Eligibility in the Revenue TWSS Reconciliation Guide at https://www.revenue.ie/en/employing-people/documents/twss/twss-reconciliation-employer-guidance.pdf


Also, see section 3.1 in the TWSS FAQ V18 on employee eligibility https://www.revenue.ie/en/employing-people/documents/pmod-topics/guidance-on-operation-of-twss.pdf

As I said before, I dont know the details of your interaction with Revenue, or why you have been advised to amend your February 2020 Payroll - but whatever you do please proceed with extreme caution

Jason

shatners bassoon wrote: »

I'm being advised by Revenue to amend our February 2020 payroll submission having been told all along not to do so as this would make the affected employees ineligible for TWSS.

Were the rules on amendment changed does anyone know?

PaybackPayroll

collsoft wrote: »

I have plenty of clients who now have been told that they are not entitled to TWSS in the temporary phase because they amended their Jan/Feb Payslips.

I would just like to add to Jason's comment above that we too have seen this happen with clients.

People who have innocently changed or resubmitted something from Jan or Feb 2020, and suddenly they owe Revenue thousands. They don't realise this has happened until they start doing the final reconciliation.

You can usually see the old payslips in the CSV file, so Revenue do have a record that these payments were originally processed on time.

I fear this will put severe pressure on businesses. They will take no comfort from the fact that if their employees went on PUP instead, they would not owe anything.

jammiedodgers

Looks like EWSS will remain in place as is for Q3 and reduced rate for Q4

https://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/1399681485452496897

NewRed2

Hi someone told me the EWSS has changed for this quarter. But I've checked around and cannot see anything that has changed, well nothing significant anyway.
So can someone please confirm are we still operating from 2019's figures and same percentage etc?

I'm pretty sure we are but you know yourself.... best to play safe and check these things. Thanks

collsoft

EWSS continues to operate the same until the end of June.

From the 1st of July the rates of subsidy available in EWSS will remain the same (as will the bands), but the qualifying period will be expanded from 6 month to 12 months.

So, from 1st of July you will determine your eligibility by comparing the whole of 2019 against the whole of 2021 (actual + projected), and the 30% drop is still the same.

Revenue should be publishing the new guidelines to explain this in more detail shortly.

Jason

NewRed2 wrote: »

Hi someone told me the EWSS has changed for this quarter. But I've checked around and cannot see anything that has changed, well nothing significant anyway.
So can someone please confirm are we still operating from 2019's figures and same percentage etc?

I'm pretty sure we are but you know yourself.... best to play safe and check these things. Thanks

NewRed2

collsoft wrote: »

EWSS continues to operate the same until the end of June.

From the 1st of July the rates of subsidy available in EWSS will remain the same (as will the bands), but the qualifying period will be expanded from 6 month to 12 months.

So, from 1st of July you will determine your eligibility by comparing the whole of 2019 against the whole of 2021 (actual + projected), and the 30% drop is still the same.

Revenue should be publishing the new guidelines to explain this in more detail shortly.

Jason

Nice one, Thank you

TheRover

Hi all,

So last year my (previous) employer informed us they were applying for TWSS. A few weeks later, they informed us that, after all, they were not. We never got any further information on TWSS and the only thing that changed in our wages was a 15% salary reduction for 2 months (deemed illegal but that's another story)

I was surprised to find out by Revenue that our employer was indeed in receipt of TWSS, despite nothing ever showing on our payslip (as per https://www.revenue.ie/en/jobs-and-pensions/twss/how-did-the-twss-operate.aspx ). Even worse, while getting my Statement of Liability for 2020, it tells me that I received €455.66 of TWSS

I can't quite wrap my head around this. What happened here? Was this money I was supposed to have gotten from my employer?

collsoft

Hi The Rover,

First, Revenue have published a full list of all employers who received TWSS. They have a spreadsheet and PDF list at

https://www.revenue.ie/en/employing-people/twss/list-of-employers/index.aspx

Employers were required to inform their employees that they were on TWSS and as you pointed out it was supposed to be shown on your payslip.

I am aware of a small number of our own customers where TWSS was not shown correctly because the payslip templates did not get updated correctly when the payroll software was updated - but even in these cases it was clear to see how the Net pay was made up.

I would suggest that you log into your Revenue my account and check all your payslips in this employment between 26th March and 31st August (inclusive)

Here you will see what TWSS the employer reported as having paid you. You will also see that all payslips have a PRSI Class of "J9" which was used for TWSS.

Then compare that to any of the payslips that you have from the time and see if they match.

Revenue did conduct a compliance check where they asked employers to give copies of payslips and bank statements, but if you feel that your employer claimed TWSS but did not pay it to you then you can report it to Revenue.

Hope this helps

TheRover wrote: »

Hi all,

So last year my (previous) employer informed us they were applying for TWSS. A few weeks later, they informed us that, after all, they were not. We never got any further information on TWSS and the only thing that changed in our wages was a 15% salary reduction for 2 months (deemed illegal but that's another story)

I was surprised to find out by Revenue that our employer was indeed in receipt of TWSS, despite nothing ever showing on our payslip (as per https://www.revenue.ie/en/jobs-and-pensions/twss/how-did-the-twss-operate.aspx ). Even worse, while getting my Statement of Liability for 2020, it tells me that I received €455.66 of TWSS

I can't quite wrap my head around this. What happened here? Was this money I was supposed to have gotten from my employer?