Post our first draft of JobKeeper Guidance sent out Tuesday this week, ATO has been trickling in with their updates. Click here to access ATO JobKeeper site. 

We have been actively following the updates, attending webinars and discussing with technical experts. While we received further clarity on a few areas, a lot more information is yet to be received from ATO. What we know, since Tuesday is;

1. Operation of JobKeeper Payments

• Businesses will be able to register for Jobkeeper from 20th April. Last date for registration has been extended to 30th April. This gives ATO more time to clarify contentious issues.
• If you would like to register directly, please activate your MyGov ID and link it to the ABN number of your business. Alternatively we can do it for you.
• As part of registration, we will need to know roughly how many employees you are wanting to claim JobKeeper Payments for. 
• For sole traders and self employed, the process will be different. We will only know the process when we check the forms on Monday.

2. Preparing for Registration

• Do your calculations for estimated turnover for April 2020 and compare with April 2019 turnover to check eligibility. If the drop in turnover is more than 30%, you qualify. We will discuss this further with you next week. 
• If you qualify, download the Employee Election Form and get them completed by your employees.
• Finalise the list of employees you will be claiming JobKeeper for. ONE-IN ALL-IN rule applies as explained below. 

3. One-in All-in Rule 

• This means you can not choose which employee you want to claim for. As long as an employee is eligible, you will need to offer the JobKeeper Payment to all of them.

4. Basis of calculating turnover

• Turnover is based on accrual / billing basis. This means that billable work that you have done in March 2020 will be compared with March 2019. For special circumstances, updates from ATO are still awaited.

5. Employee can only choose 1 employer

• If your employee is employed in two permanent part time roles, they will need to choose one, and accordingly fill their Employee Election form.

Ultimately, the best we can say for now, is to be patient. We will know a lot more early next week, and as always we will be in the forefront of providing the required guidance. 

We are also mindful of the financial impact Covid-19 is having on our clients. Hence while there is a lot of work and effort being put in to assist you in this period, we will be only charging a fraction of our costs, just to ensure we keep covering our costs as well.

Meanwhile we wish you a safe and peaceful weekend. Leave your JobKeeper worries to us. We will be in touch early next week.