Chartered Accountants Ireland, under the auspicious of the CCAB-I, wrote to Revenue Chairman, Niall Cody, seeking a deferral of the deadline for filing the June and July Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS) Eligibility Review Forms (ERFs), and requesting that the requirement to provide actual monthly VAT exclusive turnover or customer order values for 2019 be amended to accept the total turnover or customer order values for 2019.

Following this submission, Revenue extended the deadline for the completion and submission of the June EWSS ERF to 15 August 2021. In a letter responding to the CCAB-I, Revenue set out that in so far as monthly turnover figures cannot be readily accessed for the purpose of completing the EWSS ERF, businesses may use the average turnover as derived from their bi-monthly (or other periodic) VAT return data to calculate the monthly turnover value for the review form.

As of COB on Thursday, 12 August approximately 11,000 employers claiming EWSS still had outstanding ERFs. Revenue provided a grace period to 1 September, before suspending payments and encouraged employers to file outstanding ERFs by this date.

Revenue confirmed that suspended EWSS payments would be released when an employer files their outstanding ERFs. However, the release of EWSS payments could take a few days to process.

The August ERF was due on 15 September 2021. Employers were required to return actual monthly figures for August 2021 and projected monthly figures for September to December 2021.

Employers who are no longer eligible or who no longer intend to claim the EWSS must deregister.

Further information on the completion of the EWSS ERF is included in the Guidelines on eligibility for the EWSS from 1 July 2021 and on the Revenue website.