There has been an an important change to the scheme relating to employee eligibility:

• you can now claim for employees that were employed as of 19 March 2020 and were on your PAYE payroll on or before that date; this means that you will have made an RTI submission notifying HMRC of payment of that employee on or before 19 March 2020
   
• employees that were employed as of 28 February 2020 and on payroll (i.e. notified to HMRC on an RTI submission on or before 28 February) and were made redundant or stopped working for you after that, and prior to 19 March 2020, can also qualify for the scheme if you re-employ them and put them on furlough

How to claim

As you prepare to make a claim, please note:

The online claim service will be launched on GOV.UK on 20‌‌ April 2020 .
The only way to make a claim is online – the service should be simple to use and any support you need available on GOV.UK; this will include help with calculating the amount you can claim.

Claims will be paid within 6 working days; any queries cam be directed to HMRC webchat service.

HMRC cannot answer any queries from employees – they will need to raise these with you, as their employer, directly.

Information you will need before you make a claim

HMRC have advised that you will need to have the following before 20‌‌ April 2020:

A Government Gateway (GG) ID and password – if you don’t already have a GG account, you can apply for one online, or by going to GOV.UK and searching for ‘HMRC services: sign in or register’.

Be enrolled for PAYE online – if you aren’t registered yet, you can do so now, or by going to GOV.UK and searching for ‘PAYE Online for employers.

The following information for each furloughed employee you will be claiming for:

• Name.
• National Insurance number.
• Claim period and claim amount.
• PAYE/employee number (optional).

If you have fewer than 100 furloughed staff – you will need to input information directly into the system for each employee.

If you have 100 or more furloughed staff – you will need to upload a file with information for each employee; we will accept the following file types: .xls .xlsx .csv .ods.

From April 20th you can Apply online here