Government guidance states that in order to be able to claim for an employee they must have been employed by the business before 19 March 2020 and included on an RTI submission on or before 19 March 2020.

Employees may come back out of furlough if the business now has work for them, this should only happen at the end of the agreed furlough period.

Yes. This should be paid as a separate payment line for identification and reporting and is subject to PAYE and national insurance. You can only reclaim on the 80% or maximum cap allowed under the Job Retention Scheme.

As this is normal income the PAYE, employee's NIC and employer's NIC liability will continue as for any other payments. The values will be included in the full payment submission (FPS).

The furlough pay is classed as income and should be treated the same as any other standard payment. Calculations for all standard deductions of PAYE, employee's and employer's NIC as well as automatic enrolment pensions should remain.

Yes. Salary sacrifice means the employee has already agreed to a wage reduction and the new, post-sacrifice gross pay is what is used in their calculation of earnings.

It's common for some types of external costs such as childcare vouchers and pension contributions to be paid by employers, funded by the employee through a salary sacrifice scheme. In such cases, changes to the salary sacrifice amounts may be limited to after a life event, for example, marriage or the birth of a child. HMRC have confirmed that COVID-19 is considered a life event for this purpose, so employees can reduce or opt out of the salary sacrifice to increase the base salary used in their calculation of earnings.

Under automatic enrolment, the payment remains subject to employer and employer pension contributions.

If the employer is in a contractual pension scheme, not an automatic enrolment scheme, this can be discussed as part of the furlough agreement conversation with your employees and cessation of pension contributions could be agreed for the furlough period.

Yes. An employee's still employed by the company with no break in service, they're just not actively working. If the employee's holiday is based on hours, they won't see any increase in entitlement over the furlough period as they have no recorded hours.

Yes. You can furlough different groups of people, however the minimum period of a furlough is three weeks. You can review if the employees can return to work or be furloughed again at the end of each furlough period.

No. HMRC will pay employers a grant worth 80% of an employee's usual wage costs, up to £2,500 a month, plus the associated Employer National Insurance contributions and minimum automatic enrolment employer pension contributions on that subsidised wage.

If the employee has been employed for a full 12 months prior to the claim, you can claim for the higher of either:

• the same month’s earning from the previous year.
• average monthly earnings from the 2019-20 tax year.

If the employee has been employed for less than a year, you can claim for an average of their monthly earnings since they started work. For help calculating the average earnings, Click Reports, then click Employee and run the Average Earnings report.

If the employee only started in March 2020, use a pro-rata for their earnings so far to claim.

Once you’ve worked out how much of an employee’s salary you can claim for, you must then work out the amount of Employer National Insurance Contributions and minimum automatic enrolment employer pension contributions you are entitled to claim.