VARIABLE HOURS FURLOUGH

UP AND DOWN HOURS

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I a doing a furlough claim where the employee works variable hours - the payroll is weekly

Their usual hours is 12 hours per week.

In the first week of septmeber they worked 24 hours - no furlough

In the second week they worked 8 hours - therefore a small furlough claim

Is this ok? when i go to claim i am going to have a problem as the usual hours worked for the period will be more (24) than the actual hours worked (20)

its the first claim of the month so the claim automatically generates 1 september as the start date for the claim

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By jonibarnes
16th Sep 2020 13:23

https://www.icaew.com/insights/tax-news/2020/sep-2020/immediate-change-t...

I guess this kind of answers my question - I should only include the hours when the employee was on furlough so leave out the hours from the first week

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Replying to jonibarnes:
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By Paul Crowley
16th Sep 2020 13:38

Not sure it does
Fairly certain not intended to cover this.
If your reading is correct then an incentive to work alternate double week and nil week, for employee

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Replying to Paul Crowley:
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By jonibarnes
16th Sep 2020 13:46

my claim period goes from 7/9/20 - 13/9/2020

I see the above link as the same but in reverse

Has anyone read anything about high hours worked by variable pay employees who work high hours and then next to no hours the following week

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Replying to jonibarnes:
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By Paul Crowley
16th Sep 2020 14:14

But when you submit it will say 1 Sept to 13 Sept.
I have only got 2 clients using weeks so not got the problem.

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By kathyk0410
17th Sep 2020 15:07

Can you not submit the claims weekly which is what we have started doing. If it is a mixed payroll with monthly then this is a bit of hassle. We had the situation where the employees worked 4 days out of 5 but some did overtime on one of their work days. We had to include the additional hours in the actual hours so this reduced the furlough claim ..... the employer then had to top up so the employee got the amount they would be expecting. So the overtime became really expensive.

We also have something similar to yours on the pubs/restaurants as during August with the Eat Out the furlough claim was really low as hours were high though now it's going back up as people are no longer eating out. So I think variances are to be expected.

Problem is that there are too many different scenarios and the rules can't possibly cover all.

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Replying to kathyk0410:
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By jonibarnes
17th Sep 2020 15:15

I was submitting weekly, but with this particular claim no one was on furlough for the first week of September which means the claim period runs from 1/09/2020 - 14/09/20. From reading the HMRC guidance I am now of the opinion that in a situation like this even though the website asks to include all the hours during the claim period I should only include the hours during the furlough period (I think that makes sense)

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Replying to jonibarnes:
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By kathyk0410
17th Sep 2020 16:47

Before they issued the guidance if we had 4 weeks within a monthly submission we restricted the hours worked to average hours if they had worked more than average in a week. This seemed to make sense at the time but again it's not covered in current guidance. Not had to submit a mixed once since this came out but now submitting 4-6 claims a month for the weeklies due to the orphan days.

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Replying to jonibarnes:
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By kathyk0410
17th Sep 2020 16:49

You could argue that they were still on furlough that first week .... it's just that FF is nil. This is the problem even with detailed guidance people will interpret it in different ways.

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