Closing date for furlough applications

neilmcl

unholyangel said:

leitmotif said:

unholyangel said:

Yes he is, because he is talking about backdating his furlough/retrospectively declaring himself as furloughed which cannot be done. You are only eligible for costs of employees who have been furloughed. You have only been furloughed at the point you & your employer have agreed that you are furloughed. Drawing up a document with falsified information afterwards so you could be eligible would be fraud.

If you submitted an application on 20 April from, say, 1 March until 30 April, that would be a backdated claim. The company won't have drawn up a furlough agreement for the employee on 1 March, so the agreement will need to be backdated. The hypothetical situation I've outlined is not substantially different.

unholyangel said:

You're either not required to be available for work or you are. You can't be available for work and then decide that because no work came in you were actually unavailable.

The wording is 'an employee cannot undertake work for, or on behalf, of the organisation or any linked or associated organisation'. Availability doesn't come in to it. Waiting for a customer order = available. Acting on a customer order = undertaking work.

unholyangel said:

Leitmotif - I did see your question asking how it could be detected but I hope you understand why I'm not going to answer that question. It would be irresponsible of me.

Yes, I understand that, though not answering has the concomitant advantage of not having to acknowledge that it is utterly undetectable (not least because whatever methods of detection you might be imagining, besides being extreme, are easily covered).

I said you were attempting to backdate the furlough, not attempting to backdate the claim. The claim can be backdated, the furlough can't. 

Rubbish. Practically everyone claiming from March 1st would've had to backdate their furlough as the very concept of furlough in this regards hadn't even been thought about because the scheme didn't get announced until the end of March.
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unholyangel

neilmcl said:

unholyangel said:

leitmotif said:

unholyangel said:

Yes he is, because he is talking about backdating his furlough/retrospectively declaring himself as furloughed which cannot be done. You are only eligible for costs of employees who have been furloughed. You have only been furloughed at the point you & your employer have agreed that you are furloughed. Drawing up a document with falsified information afterwards so you could be eligible would be fraud.

If you submitted an application on 20 April from, say, 1 March until 30 April, that would be a backdated claim. The company won't have drawn up a furlough agreement for the employee on 1 March, so the agreement will need to be backdated. The hypothetical situation I've outlined is not substantially different.

unholyangel said:

You're either not required to be available for work or you are. You can't be available for work and then decide that because no work came in you were actually unavailable.

The wording is 'an employee cannot undertake work for, or on behalf, of the organisation or any linked or associated organisation'. Availability doesn't come in to it. Waiting for a customer order = available. Acting on a customer order = undertaking work.

unholyangel said:

Leitmotif - I did see your question asking how it could be detected but I hope you understand why I'm not going to answer that question. It would be irresponsible of me.

Yes, I understand that, though not answering has the concomitant advantage of not having to acknowledge that it is utterly undetectable (not least because whatever methods of detection you might be imagining, besides being extreme, are easily covered).

I said you were attempting to backdate the furlough, not attempting to backdate the claim. The claim can be backdated, the furlough can't. 

Rubbish. Practically everyone claiming from March 1st would've had to backdate their furlough as the very concept of furlough in this regards hadn't even been thought about because the scheme didn't get announced until the end of March.
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It's not rubbish. The government have only ever advised on the rules for the claim - they have never advised on the employment law surrounding it other than to say it must still be complied with. They have stated you can backdate the claim. They have never stated you can backdate the furlough. Again, furlough is not a new concept for some in society. There were posts on here from people who were furloughed in january or february for reasons completely unrelated to covid. In a few industries, it is standard practice. 

Need proof? Here's a quote from a solicitor's page:

The scheme will run until at least 30 June 2020 - extended from the previously-announced date of 31 May 2020 - and payments can be backdated to 1 March 2020 provided that employees met the eligibility criteria at the time.

Or how about this one:

Claims can be backdated to 1 March 2020 where employees have already been furloughed. However, the grant is only available from when an employee has finished work and started furlough. 

Or this one: 

Pay can be backdated to 1 March for those furloughed. If they were furloughed after 1 March, remember that the scheme only applies to them from the date they were actually furloughed

As for consulting with the accountant, that all depends on why they're consulting with them! If its with regards to filing the company accounts then that would be fine as that is a statutory duty of a director. If it's to ask questions about CJRS eligiblity then that is not a director duty and is instead providing services for your company. 

leitmotif

unholyangel said:

I said you were attempting to backdate the furlough, not attempting to backdate the claim. The claim can be backdated, the furlough can't. The backdating the government referred to (being able to do it to the 1st march) was where employees had already effectively been furloughed (even if by a different name before the scheme was ever announced) and was speaking about backdating the claim, not the furlough. 

I don't accept the distinction, because you go on to qualify furloughed as 'effectively furloughed', which is quite different to formally furloughed. Your 'effectively furloughed' allows for the following scenario: The director of a one-man limited stops receiving orders/offers of work from customers in February. Recognising that this is down to the coronavirus crisis, and recognising that this crisis might persist for quite some time, he decides that he'll take an extended break from work. He's now 'effectively furloughed (even if by a different name before the scheme is announced)'. Once the scheme is announced, he writes himself an open-ended furlough letter as per one of my previous comments and applies as and when he sees fit (because the government guidance doesn't stipulate that he apply straight away).

unholyangel said:

Making yourself available for work (ie being "on call") is working time!

I don't accept the conflation, as being on call is quite different from being available for work. When on call, one is formally scheduled to provide services as and when required, is being paid to be on call, is not 'effectively furloughed'. Being 'effectively furloughed' because no work has been coming in for weeks and one has resigned oneself to this, has decided to take an extended break, and will only break the 'effective furlough' if a customer e-mail pops up on one's phone saying 'here's a decent amount of money for an easy job' is no more analogous to being on call than an employee being 'effectively furloughed' and being potentially available should his/her employer call and say 'actually, we've got work, can you start again tomorrow?'

unholyangel said:
the working time regulations [...] state that working time is any time you are at your employer's disposal.

Right, so not at your customers' disposal?

unholyangel said:
solicitors and accountants [...] have PI insurance they can rely on if they're wrong. What do you have to rely on if you're wrong? 

The fact of being effectively furloughed throughout, the total absence of evidence to the contrary and the total lack of detectability.

unholyangel said:
As for the detection, some of the methods I had in mind might be imagined but some are real - which is why I won't disclose them. I appreciate me not disclosing them draws doubt on what I said but that's something I accept. I might be quite outspoken in my opinions but I'm not interested in point scoring or getting one over on someone  

My persistence isn't about point-scoring. As I mentioned to someone else above, the 'culture' on MSE's forum is such that there's a lot of negativity, people trying to shoot people down. I expect to have to bulldoze my way through this to get to a point where I can explore various positions in detail (often by playing devil's advocate to them, as I'm doing here).

I should stress that my use of the verb 'imagine' wasn't intended to mean that the methods of detection that you had in mind (the more apposite turn of phrase) are not real. I don't doubt that they're real. I do doubt that they'd be effective, and all of the detection methods I have in mind are entirely and straightforwardly circumventable.

leitmotif

unholyangel said:

As for consulting with the accountant, that all depends on why they're consulting with them! If its with regards to filing the company accounts then that would be fine as that is a statutory duty of a director. If it's to ask questions about CJRS eligiblity then that is not a director duty and is instead providing services for your company. 

Given that it's notoriously difficult to get accountants to commit to anything in writing, all advice is likely to be by phone only and the content of the call won't be provable.

That aside, I'd like to ask a question from a position of semi-ignorance. I was under the impression that furloughed employees can't engage in any revenue-generating activities for a company if they've been furloughed. Obviously some activities are more directly related to generating revenue for a company than others. If as director I decide that once the coronavirus crisis is all over, I'd like the company to have a new website, would sketching some ideas be off the cards? That's just one of a myriad of possible examples, and again the question 'who's going to know?' comes into play, but you get my drift.

BrassicWoman

leitmotif said:

That aside, I'd like to ask a question from a position of semi-ignorance. I was under the impression that furloughed employees can't engage in any revenue-generating activities for a company if they've been furloughed. Obviously some activities are more directly related to generating revenue for a company than others. If as director I decide that once the coronavirus crisis is all over, I'd like the company to have a new website, would sketching some ideas be off the cards? That's just one of a myriad of possible examples, and again the question 'who's going to know?' comes into play, but you get my drift.

A very generous system has been put in place to try and help you.
These "how can I game it" questions leave a bad taste. If you're going to be sly, why drag others into it? First rule of bending rules is to keep your mouth shut. Take your own decisions and risks, fall on your own sword. What anyone but HMRC and the courts think doesn't matter.

leitmotif

BrassicWoman said:

A very generous system has been put in place to try and help you.
These "how can I game it" questions leave a bad taste. If you're going to be sly, why drag others into it? First rule of bending rules is to keep your mouth shut. Take your own decisions and risks, fall on your own sword. What anyone but HMRC and the courts think doesn't matter.

It's not generous. The government is trying to keep the economy as a whole afloat. It's not interested in your well-being as an individual.

I'm not interested in bending the rules. I'm interested in playing by the rules in a way that maximises my own benefit (or, to view it from a different perspective, in minimising the extent to which I lose out by failing to acquaint myself with the rules). Systems often have loopholes, by accident or by design. Those who don't explore the loopholes so that they can play by the rules in a way that maximises their own benefit are, frankly, stupid.

When taking one's own decisions and risks, one should always seek to do so from an informed position. Hence what other parties think is relevant.

ComicGeek

leitmotif said:

BrassicWoman said:

A very generous system has been put in place to try and help you.
These "how can I game it" questions leave a bad taste. If you're going to be sly, why drag others into it? First rule of bending rules is to keep your mouth shut. Take your own decisions and risks, fall on your own sword. What anyone but HMRC and the courts think doesn't matter.

Systems often have loopholes, by accident or by design. Those who don't explore the loopholes so that they can play by the rules in a way that maximises their own benefit are, frankly, stupid.

Loopholes by accident are likely to be closed, and potentially extremely costly to try and exploit - just look at all the celebrity tax avoidance schemes and the consequences!

We should all be trying to operate within the spirit of the furlough system - I think anyone remotely looking to take advantage of it, beyond that intended, is going to have real problems at some point. Never annoy the tax man!!

BrassicWoman

leitmotif said:

I'm not interested in bending the rules.

A wander through your other threads suggests this is not the case. Leopard, spots, etc. I suspect this feels like a game to you, that you need to win by being smarter than anyone else.

leitmotif

ComicGeek said:

We should all be trying to operate within the spirit of the furlough system

There is more room for manoeuvre when it comes to interpreting the spirit of something than there is when it comes to interpreting the letter of something. I interpret the spirit of this particular scheme to be about keeping the UK economy afloat. I am interested in exploring ways to maximise my buoyancy.

leitmotif

BrassicWoman said:
A wander through your other threads suggests this is not the case. Leopard, spots, etc. I suspect this feels like a game to you, that you need to win by being smarter than anyone else.

A perfect example of what I meant by the 'shooting gallery' in an earlier post on this thread. You're not offering a constructive, detailed examination of one or more of the various positions being considered in this thread.