Can employees on fixed-term contracts be furloughed?
Yes. Their contracts can be renewed or extended during the furlough period without breaking the terms of the scheme.
If the employee’s contract has not already expired, the contract can be extended or renewed. The employee may be furloughed provided that they were employed on or before 30 October 2020. You must also have made a RTI submission to HMRC between 20 March 2020 and 30 October 2020.
If the employee’s contract expired on or after 23 September 2020, the employee can be re-employed and furloughed. Please note that the employee must have been employed by you on 23 September 2020 and you must have made a RTI submission to HMRC between 20 March 2020 and 30 October 2020.
Related FAQs
It would apply if the contractor uses an intermediary to provide their services or labour and they would be deemed to be an employee or office holder for tax purposes if they were hired directly by the end user client rather than via the intermediary PSC. This would of course require an assessment of employment status for tax purposes.
Contractors who are not taxed in the UK and supply their services exclusively from outside of the UK are unaffected.
If IR35 applies, tax and NIC’s should be deducted under PAYE by the PSC. In reality this has not been happening so a major reform of the regime was due to be implemented in April 2020. The changes were postponed by one year and are due to take effect from 6 April 2021.
“Within IR35” means a contractor arrangement is caught by IR35 and the individual should be taxed as an employee.
“Outside IR35” means a contractor arrangement is not caught by IR35 and the contractor status is fine.
Cancellation insurance usually covers certain expenses and loss of profit, as long as the reason for cancellation is not excluded. These exclusion clauses are often quite wide and exclude avian, swine flu, quarantine, and restrictions of movement as a result of communicable disease. This means that you may not be entitled to compensation under this cover.
Another obvious cost cutting measure is to reduce working hours, either temporarily or permanently. Again, it should be done fairly, either across the board or by selecting teams/individuals based on objective business reasons. Imposing without agreement would create significant risk, therefore would require fair selection and consultation.
The reaction from NCVO is that this is an important first step. However, it will not stop well run charities from closing and others will look very different in a few months’ time.
Normally, once you have submitted the online visa application and paid the fee, you have to attend an appointment to enrol your biometrics and verify your passport within 45 days. This requirement has been relaxed due to the visa application centres being closed.
Now that application centres have mostly reopened, you must book and attend an appointment to complete the application process. However, the Home Office has recently introduced the IDV app which allows applicants who previously gave their fingerprints as part of a previous application since July 2015, to upload a photo electronically. There will then be no need to attend a Visa Application Centre to submit their biometrics. Applicants who are eligible to use this electronic option will be contacted by UKVI.