NSW JobSaver Eligibility Retesting Requirement – What Do You Need to Know?

As from 10 September 2021, businesses and not-for-profit organisations are required to re-confirm their eligibility to continue to receive the JobSaver Payment for every fortnightly period from 13 September to 26 September 2021 onwards.

 

What Does This Requirement Mean for Your Business?

In a nutshell, your business may only qualify intermittently on a fortnight-by-fortnight basis for the JobSaver payment, depending on whether the business experiences at least a 30% decline in turnover in each fortnightly period.

This is a recent change to the Scheme introduced by the NSW Government and is a point of difference from the JobKeeper scheme administered by the Federal Government.

 

What Do You Need to Do?

You will be asked to re-confirm your business’ eligibility for each payment at the end of each fortnight for the remainder of the program’s duration.

According to Service NSW, the eligibility should be verified on the fortnightly basis confirming that:

• The employee headcount from the initial application on 13 July 2021 remains the same; and
• The business has continued to experience a decline in turnover of at least 30%.

If a business cannot trade because of lockdown, the business can confirm its eligibility without doing any further work by ticking “yes” on the confirmation screen.

Otherwise, the decline in turnover for the current fortnight in question can be calculated by applying one of the following options when choosing the comparison period:

Option 1: If the comparison period used in the initial confirmation of eligibility was in 2019 or 2020, then you can use the same year but adjust the comparison period to match the current fortnight that is being tested.

Option 2: If the comparison period used in the initial confirmation of eligibility was in 2019 or 2020, then you can use the same comparison period that you used in your original application.

Option 3: If 12 June 2021 – 25 June 2021 was used as the initial comparison period then you must use this same period when reconfirming eligibility each fortnight.

 

Important Considerations

• Reapplication for the scheme is not required, even if the business was ineligible for payment in the previous fortnight. All the business needs to do is re-confirm eligibility for the next applicable fortnight.
• The business can re-confirm eligibility retrospectively for previous fortnights and still receive payments for those previous fortnights.
• Re-confirming eligibility for a particular fortnight can be delayed until the business has finalised its month-end accounting records. A business can re-confirm eligibility for multiple fortnights at the one time.
• YourMyServiceNSW Business Profile will show you the fortnights for which confirmation is still required.
• Additional evidence confirming eligibility for each fortnight is not required upon submission, however adequate records evidencing eligibility must be retained.
• A business that has some turnover but remains impacted by the ongoing Public Health Order in NSW will need to re-calculate its turnover before eligibility is re-confirmed.

 

Next Steps

This change to the JobSaver scheme marks a radical change in the terms and conditions of the scheme to the ones initially published by the NSW Government at the scheme’s outset.

If your business continues to be impacted by the lockdown, it is critical that you proactively test your business’ decline in turnover each fortnight moving forward to continue receiving payments under JobSaver (if eligible).

Please reach out to one of our team members if you need assistance with re-confirming your business’ eligibility.