EWSS Sweepback and TWSS Overpayment Reconciliation
by Adam McCarthy
 

 

 

TWSS Reconciliation

 

The Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) closed on 31st August 2020. Revenue will be conducting a reconciliation of the subsidy amounts refunded by Revenue to employers and the amounts of the subsidy that were paid to employees by employers.

 

During the transitional phase of the scheme, Revenue refunded a flat rate of €410 per employee per pay period. In a lot of cases, this amount exceeded the subsidy that the employee was entitled to receive for that week, and this will be rectified when Revenue perform a reconciliation of employer refunds.

 

The aim of the reconciliation is to:

  • Establish the actual subsidy amounts which were paid to each employee 
  • Determine if the correct amounts were paid to each employee during the transitional phase 
  • Address any outstanding subsidy refunds or repayments necessary.

The reconciliation process consists of two phases:

 

Phase 1

 

The first phase in the reconciliation process is to submit a reconciliation report to Revenue by 31 October 2020. There are 3 ways to do this:

  1. Through your payroll provider. Employers will need to check with their payroll provider to determine the dates from which the payroll software can report the subsidy payments.
  2. Revenue Payroll Reporting in ROS.  The employer can report the subsidy paid by manually reporting the payroll notification in ROS. The employer can access payroll reporting in ROS and report the subsidy paid by including an amount in the “Other Payments” field.
  3. Subsidy Paid CSV upload available in ROS. Some payroll software packages will generate a subsidy paid file for the employer to upload to ROS to report the subsidy paid.

Phase 2

All active payslips submitted will be examined to determine the subsidy payable amount for each payslip based on the rules of the TWSS. Revenue will then issue a refund if the TWSS was under claimed or more probably issue a demand for any over payment of the TWSS.

Revenue are currently saying that if the reconciliation is not completed by 31 October then Revenue will “recoup from you the total temporary wage subsidy paid and related interest charges”.

 

 

EWSS Sweepback Reminder of upcoming deadline

 

The Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS), a COVID-19 relief measure, came into effect from 1st September 2020 and is currently expected to run until 31st March 2021 (although provision has been made for a possible extension at a later stage). This scheme replaces the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) which finished 31st August 2020. Some employees may not have been eligible for TWSS and as a result there was an increased financial burden on some businesses. In order to rectify this Revenue has implemented the July / August EWSS sweepback. Under the sweepback, eligible employers can backdate a claim for EWSS to 1st July for the relevant eligible employees. This is allowed under the following circumstances:

  • The employer was not eligible for TWSS; or
  • The employer had employees ineligible for TWSS.

In order to apply for the sweepback, you need to download and fill in the Sweepback CSV Template. The deadline for submission is tomorrow the 14th October 2020. Employers can submit Sweepback CSV files via ROS. These sweepback CSV files are then held, unprocessed, and Revenue will process these each Tuesday night from 22nd September 2020 until 14th October 2020. Revenue have released a guidance document for the sweepback process covering eligibility, how to apply, how to fill in the CSV as well as how to upload it to ROS.

 

https://www.revenue.ie/en/employing-people/documents/ewss/ewss-sweepback-guidelines.pdf

 

Regards

Adam McCarthy