On the 21st of July 2020, the Australian Federal Government announced the extension of the JobKeeper scheme for a further six months until 28 March 2021. There are two separate extension periods & for each extension period an additional actual decline in turnover test applies & the JobKeeper payment differs.
The 2 new extensions will cover the following pay periods
28 September 2020 to 3 January 2021 (Extension 1)
4 January 2021 to 28 March 2021 (Extension 2)
There are 2 tests that employers needs to pass in order to access the government assistance
Turnover Test
Just like with 1st stage of JobKeeper (1 March 2020 to 27 September 2020) an employer must be carrying on a business and their turnover must fall by 30% or more for aggregated turnovers of $1b or less.
Employers will now need to reassess their turnover for each of the 2 new periods:
Extension 1 (28 September 2020 to 3 January 2021), Employers will be required to demonstrate that their actual GST turnover has fallen in the September 2020 quarter (July, August, September) and compare it to the same quarter in the previous year.
Extension 2 (4 January 2021 to 28 March 2021), Employers will be required to demonstrate that their actual GST turnover has fallen in the December 2020 quarter (October, November, December) and compare to the previous year’s quarter.
Employee Eligibility Test
The new test date for assessing employees is 1 July 2020. All workers must be fulltime, part-time or long term casual employees, employed as of 1 July 2020.
This is applicable from the 10th JobKeeper fortnight i.e. 3 August 2020 pays onwards.
Once eligible, Employers will have to calculate the correct JobKeeper rates for each employee:
The new rates are split into a high and low rate (based on average weekly work hours) in the 4 weeks prior to the applicable employment date either 1 March 2020 or 1 July 2020. The threshold is 20 hours.
For support or advice, please contact our people specialists for assistance.
For further information, please refer to:
Source: ATO
Title: JobKeeper Extension
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