Below are the recent updates with regards to the Wage Subsidy.
Wage Subsidy 12-week period has ended for applications and Wage Subsidy Extension 8-week period can still be applied for
Applications close at 11.59pm on September 1, 2020
To apply, your business needs to have experienced a minimum 40% decline in revenue for a continuous 30-day period, due to Covid-19, and within the 40 days before you apply (but no earlier than 10 May 2020) - compared to the closest period last year.
Revenue means the total amount of money a business has earned before expenses are deducted (do not include the Wage Subsidy in your calculations)
You can apply for the Wage Subsidy Extension for 8 weeks if your revenue meets the criteria and
- if an employee has finished the 12-week Wage Subsidy
- even if you did not apply for the Wage Subsidy for an employee before
- you can only apply once for each employee
- employees are legally working in NZ
Check out this video:
Resurgence Wage Subsidy 2-week subsidy
Applications: from 1pm on 21 August until 3 September 2020
Remember: if you are already receiving other Covid-19 payments for an employee, you cannot receive the Resurgence Wage Subsidy.
The two-week wage subsidy is at the same rate as the previous subsidies
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$585.80 for people working 20 hours or more per week (full-time rate)
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$350.00 for people working less than 20 hours per week (part-time rate)
The application process online is similar to the previous Wage Subsidy and Extension applications. You will be asked to declare you meet the criteria and agree to the obligations for the use of the payment – which are subject to audits and review.
Criteria for Resurgence Wage Subsidy
The criteria for the new wage subsidy are similar to the current extension: In particular, a business must have had, or is predicting to have, a revenue drop due to COVID-19 of at least 40%. For this new scheme, the revenue drop applies for any consecutive period of at least 14 days within 12 August and 10 September compared to last year.
If you have been in business for less than a year, you can still apply using a 14-day period that gives the best estimation of the revenue decline experienced.
Leave Support Scheme - Support for testing
To further support wide-scale testing, the government has removed the revenue-drop and ‘negatively impacted’ tests for the COVID-19 Leave Support Scheme. This means businesses with workers who have been told by health officials or their medical practitioner to self-isolate will receive the equivalent of the wage subsidy to help cover that person’s wages for the time they cannot be at work.
If you apply for the Leave Support Scheme before 1 PM on 21 August 2020 you have to meet a revenue test. The revenue test will not apply after this time.
Note: This is for employees who cannot come to work because they are in one of the affected groups (Ministry of Health guidelines) and who cannot work from home.
Mortgage deferral Scheme
The mortgage deferral scheme is also being extended from its current end-date of 27 September, to 31 March 2021. Further details will be made available by the Reserve Bank and the retail banks.
We will be contacting you with any new updates as we hear about them – please email any queries or concerns and we will respond as soon as possible.
If we can all stay well, we should be back to normal very shortly.
Stay safe.
