Good day Bronwyn,

Thank you for your support post.

Please may you supply me the documentation pertaining to the companies being able to claim 50% back in leave payments?

We unfortunately cannot comment on the Legislation regarding if you may claim for TERS, if the employees were still paid in full based on leave payments.  You will need to confirm this with the Department of Labour.

You would select the Basic Salary or UIF Remuneration based on what was paid to the employees, however this will most likely be UIF Remuneration as the Basic Salary for the period was zero.

Please refer to the guide below for TERS application guidelines.

Hi Jamie

It's been widely publicised by now.  It was gazetted on 4th May. Gazette No 43265 - see attached.

See the following article https://businesstech.co.za/news/trending/394968/new-changes-to-south-africas-coronavirus-employee-relief-scheme-and-annual-leave/

Our company has received a payout early May for my submission end April and I have reversed all our employees annual leave.  They only have not paid anything as yet for our 15 foreign employees even after I submitted the 3 months payroll as requested. 

43265_4-5_Labour.pdf

Good Day Bronwyn

Please could you assist with the procedures you followed pertaining to the leave, our company also advanced staff leave so that they could get full salaries, and now I'm lost as how to claim it back and re-imburse them,

Hi Belinda

You submit your April claim through the dedicated UIF TERS website. Generate the file through Pastel Payroll and where it asks for shutdown income you add the net amount you paid to each employee.  You then submit the generated csv file on the website and wait :-)

I took the amount that UIF paid out for each employee (according to their payment schedule) and divided it by each employee's daily rate to get exactly how many days I can reimburse. So say UIF paid out R5000 and the employees daily rate was R500, I reimbursed 10 leave days.  There are 2 ways to do it on Payroll

1. Go to the employees masterfile, leave tab and add 10 days to the opening balance or
2. Reverse the leave on the payslip on the leave tab like a journal entry if you put in the end of the month e.g. 06/05/2020 – 06/05/2020  the leave taken box will reflect 1 you can override this and fill in -xx days and description TERS Leave reversed - this will "pay it back" on the payslip.  You then add code 5026 Covid 19 Disaster Relief trust on the income tab and include the exact amount UIF paid out.  The 2 then "cancel" each other out but any PAYE and UIF will be reversed as the Disaster Relief fund is non-taxable income.

If you use Option 1 you would need to manually enter code 5012 on each employees payslip and the amount repaid by UIF as a minus as well as add the amount under code 5026 as explained above.

Hope this helps and makes sense.  I figured out option 1 but our Payroll software consultant eventually got back to me and showed me the other way to do it after I had already done it.  It's easier to do it her way but I didn't realise one could override the days taken on the leave tab.

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you need any more clarity. 

Thank you Bronwyn so much for getting back to me. I haven't submitted to TERS as yet for April as i was unsure on how to process the leave taken. Did you just calculate it  manually? did you deduct the leave paid from the actual income and submit that amount to TERS? I have consulted so many people regarding this and many are unaware of how to do the initial submission so that is shows that it was leave paid. The next question (sorry, but you seem to be very knowledgeable Lol) the TERS is paid to the Company, you then have to submit proof that you have paid the amount to the employees that TERS recommended, that throws me out as they have already been paid. One tax practitioner also said that if we top up the TERS or pay 50% of their salary the system normally rejects it, is this correct? Thank you, thank you, thank you once again. 

I sent a long reply and the system lost it   will try again

It took many hours of research and hair pulling an webinars etc to figure it out I also redid it a few times in the early hours of the morning aarrgghhhh lol! 

I'm assuming you have done your April payroll run and use Pastel Payroll?  If so then you know where to go in the software to get to generate the csv file that you need to submit.

I run a weekly and monthly payroll and we paid out 2 weeks of their annual leave and 2 weeks of their sick leave as I read earlier in the shutdown that the Dept of Labour was encouraging employers to utilise employees annual, sick leave so that they don't lose out.  I only submitted end April after I read that they will pay out a portion of leave used as long as you credit the proportionate leave days back to the employee.  They only changed the directive early May. They send a payment schedule after they payout and I manually calculated the days I needed to credit according to the amount they paid for each employee (divide the amount by their daily rate) 

I didn't deduct anything as we only paid leave income for April.  As long as you are honest about what you paid and can prove it was leave utilised it's fine.  The column Shutdown Income is by default reflecting nil. This is where you put in the employees nett income paid to them for April. 

I'm not sure if you have paid their normal wages and salaries as well as leave? I don't know if they will pay out in this case but like I said as long as you are honest in your submission.

I emailed them a leave audit trail as well as leave history for April and then after I added the days another leave history to prove the credit.  I also email a monthly analysis for April proving what I paid was indeed leave payments.

Good luck, all you can do is try.  I didn't think they would pay out but they did and we are very grateful as it allows us to pay our employees some of their wages for May. 

You shouldn't top up TERS benefit as the employee cannot earn more than what they usually do.  If the company can afford to pay them something they should and submit to TERS who will work on a formula and pay something towards the employee.  It will obviously be less than if the company couldn't afford to pay anything.

Bronwyn i cannot thank you enough for your assistance and taking your valuable time to assist a complete stranger. This is a rare trait these days. I truly appreciate it. Thank you so very much

An absolute pleasure Belinda!  I know the absolute nightmare and hours of researching and tring to find answers, so I'm glad I could assist.

Good luck and I'm sure we'll "see" each other around here :-)