HMRC wants back taxes from business furlough claimants

I don't disagree with anything you've said, but all that has to be balanced out with some consideration of who the ultimate losers would be had the grant claims been stopped sooner.

There may be a few out there who are not passing anything on to their staff but I would imagine for most of the businesses to whom the article refers, the net wage portion is at least being passed on to furloughed staff who need it, and stopping the claims under CJRS would put them out of a job.

Clearly with restrictions lifting and most businesses back in business, this is the time to start squeezing those who ought to have already paid their debts and not give them any more, but to do it much earlier would have been problematic.

It's good to know that you feel that all the highly skilled lighting and sound engineers who work on gigs often on major tours jobs just don't exist anymore because they haven't worked for 16 months. It's going to take a lot longer for the many small very specialised companies who do this work to get back to anything like the taxable income they were previously earning pre pandemic. This was lost through no fault of their own. Are you advocating that they all change skills and become cake decorators as one to my knowledge was offered on the government retraining scheme. Seriously there are some situations where the businesses are having to take a long hard look at the situation and think carefully about what danger they are potentially putting themselves/their employees in if they actually get offered any of the very very scarce work available in their field at the moment.

stjean wrote:

It's good to know that you feel that all the highly skilled lighting and sound engineers who work on gigs often on major tours jobs just don't exist anymore because they haven't worked for 16 months. It's going to take a lot longer for the many small very specialised companies who do this work to get back to anything like the taxable income they were previously earning pre pandemic. This was lost through no fault of their own. Are you advocating that they all change skills and become cake decorators as one to my knowledge was offered on the government retraining scheme. Seriously there are some situations where the businesses are having to take a long hard look at the situation and think carefully about what danger they are potentially putting themselves/their employees in if they actually get offered any of the very very scarce work available in their field at the moment.

Add up all the people in all the industries who are still not able to work due to specifically to government restrictions and tell me if it comes to even 1% of the working population of the country.

It did cover ERNI and pension contributions in the original guise, so if employers have not paid that over to HMRC then they have received the funding but not paid the expense. I would have more sympathy for companies who have had to fund ERNI in later iterations of CJRS but not had the income to cover the expenditure.
Whilst I agree that there are many instances of companies using CJRS to put off the inevitable redundancies, I think it is short sighted to say that there is no legitimate need for CJRS after 19th July, especially as many employees are flexi furloughed rather than on full furlough. Many employers will find their work increasing on a gradual basis as people, hopefully, become more confident about going out with no social distancing in place. Equally, in the entertainment industry, not every show is going to return immediately on 19th July.