TaxRambling.com

The JobKeeper application comes out on Monday and there is still one big question… As the JobKeeper payment is “monthly in arrears”, do I have to have paid my employees $1,500 a fortnight to get the $1,500 JobKeeper payment from the ATO (effectively reimbursing me for all or some of the amount I have already paid that employee)?

Section 10 of the regulations or the JobKeeper payments states that to be eligible or the $1,500 payment for an employee, the employer must have ALREADY paid the employee $1,500 for the fortnight in question (salary, PAYGW, salary sacrifice and super at least to $1,500). So the answer is YES.

There were rumours that the ATO would let you get away with it for the first payment in May, primarily due to the act tax the payment in May covers all of April but the regulations were no registered until 10 April and there is still questions being sorted out about eligibility (like turnover tests).

But now the ATO has come up with a totally impractical answer. Immediately upon JobKeeper enrolment, the ATO will issue the employer an acknowledgement notice. The ATO says with that notice you can run to the bank and borrow the money to pay the $1,500… This could get messy!