The Government has announced a number of amendments to the JobKeeper scheme over the last couple of months. The most pressing of those amendments is the change of the reference date for determining employee eligibility to 1 July 2020. Employees that were not eligible employees based on the original 1 March 2020 reference date, may now be eligible commencing from 3 August 2020.
Today is the last day to provide a nomination notice to employees who have become eligible employees under the 1 July 2020 eligibility test. A copy of the revised nomination notice is available here.
For the fortnights commencing on 3 and 17 August 2020, employers have until 31 August 2020 to meet the wage condition for employees now eligible due to the 1 July 2020 reference date.
Employees that may now also be eligible include:
- Full-time or part-time permanent employees who have been employed after 1 March 2020 but by 1 July 2020;
- Casual employees who did not meet the definition of a long term casual employee by 1 March 2020, but did meet the definition on 1 July 2020 as they had now been employed for 12 months or longer;
- Employees who were not aged 16 years or older on 1 March 2020, but have had their 16th birthday by 1 July 2020;
- Employees who were aged 16 or 17 years on 1 March 2020 but did not meet the living independently or not undertaking full-time study requirement, but either did meet that requirement or have had their 18th birthday by 1 July 2020; and
- Employees who did not meet the residency requirement on 1 March 2020, but did meet it on 1 July 2020.
There are also amendments that deal with employees that have changed employers between 1 March 2020 and 1 July 2020. They are able to re-nominate as an eligible employee of their new employer if certain criteria are met.
Employees who qualified under the 1 March 2020 requirements do not need to retest under the 1 July 2020 requirements.
We’ll provide a further update with details of the extension of the JobKeeper scheme beyond 28 September 2020 once legislation has passed to implement the changes.
