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Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS)
From Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment
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From Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment
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The Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS) is an economy-wide enterprise support that focuses primarily on business eligibility. The scheme provides a flat-rate subsidy to qualifying employers based on the numbers of eligible employees on the employer’s payroll and gross pay to employees.
The EWSS replaced the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) from 1 September 2020. It is expected to continue until 30 April 2022.
Employers
Employers must have tax clearance from Revenue. You can check your tax clearance status through Revenue Online Service (ROS). If you do not currently have tax clearance, you can make an application using the eTax clearance service.
Qualifying criteria
You must also be able to demonstrate:
The period of time used to establish the reduction in turnover, or customer orders, will vary depending on when your business commenced. The reference turnover period for business that commenced trading:
Criteria for certain employers re-entering the scheme
On 21 December 2021, the Government announced an extension of the EWSS scheme. If you are ineligible under the current scheme you may be able to re-enter the scheme from the 1 January 2022.
You can re-enter the scheme if you expect to suffer a 30% decrease in turnover or customer order values in December 2021 and January 2022 versus December 2019 and January 2020.
If your business commenced after 1 May 2019, you should compare the average monthly turnover of December 2021 and January 2022 to the average monthly turnover or customer order values from August to November 2021.
Compliance checks
To ensure that the scheme is operated as intended, Revenue are undertaking risk based real time compliance checks.
You must undertake a review of your eligibility for the scheme. This review must be done on the last day of every month up to and including December 2021. If, after this review, you no longer meet the eligibility criteria, you should take the necessary action and withdraw from the scheme.
The review must compare the actual and projected business performance over the period January 2021 to December 2021, for pay dates in the period 1 July 2021 to 30 April 2022.
Qualifying childcare businesses
Childcare businesses, registered in accordance with Section 58C of the Child Care Act 1991, are included in the scheme. There is no requirement to meet the turnover test but other eligibility criteria such as regitration and tax clearance must be met.
Employees
During the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS), you can claim a subsidy for eligible employees on the payroll of an impacted business.
Employees are eligible if they are in receipt of weekly gross wages between €151.50 and €1,462.
There is no legislative requirement that employees are actively working to be eligible for the EWSS.
Proprietary directors
The subsidy can be claimed for certain proprietary directors. This was agreed in recognition of the key role played by certain proprietary directors in providing employment, especially in the small and medium enterprises (SME) sector.
You can claim the subsidy for proprietary directors if:
Where a person is a proprietary director of two or more eligible companies, a claim for the EWSS can only be submitted for one company.
Connected parties
EWSS cannot be claimed in respect of certain connected parties. These are connected parties who were not on the payroll and paid at any time between 1 July 2019 and 30 June 2020. Connected parties include, an individual's or their spouse’s:
Employees employed otherwise than as part of a business
Additional excluded employees are those employed otherwise than as part of a business. Examples of these employees, are domestic employees such as:
Employers
You, or your authorised payroll agent, can now register for the EWSS through Revenue Online Service (ROS). As part of the registration process, you or your authorised agent will be required to make a declaration.
Applications will only be processed if you:
You must retain supporting evidence of your basis for entering and remaining in the scheme. These will be required for any future compliance and verification checks.
Employers need to be validly registered on or before 31 December 2021 to participate in the scheme from 1 January to 30 April 2022.
If an EWSS payment submission is filed without first registering for the EWSS, it will be rejected in full.
As registration cannot be backdated, you must register for the EWSS prior to the first pay date for which the subsidy is being claimed.
Revenue will administer the EWSS through the payroll under a 'self-assessment' basis.
Claiming for employees
To indicate that an EWSS subsidy is being requested for an eligible employee, you:
On receipt of an eligible EWSS payroll submission, Revenue will:
The subsidy amount paid to you will depend on the gross income of each employee. The EWSS will give a flat-rate subsidy to you, based on the number of qualifying employees on your payroll.
No subsidy is paid for employees paid less than €151.50 or more than €1,462 gross per week.
| Subsidy rates payable per pay date | |||
| Employee gross weekly wage | Up to 31 January 2022 | From 1 to 28 February 2022 | From 1 March to 30 April 2022 |
| Less than €151.50 | Nil | Nil | Nil |
| From €151.50 to €202.99 | €203 | €151.50 | €100 |
| From €203 to €299.99 | €250 | €203 | €100 |
| From €300 to €399.99 | €300 | €203 | €100 |
| From €400 to €1,462 | €350 | €203 | €100 |
| More than €1,462 | Nil | Nil | Nil |
Subsidy payment frequency
For monthly pay periods, reporting four or five insurable weeks, gross-weekly wage is calculated by:
Pay Related Social Insurance (PRSI) reduced rate
A 0.5% rate of employer’s Pay Related Social Insurance (PRSI) will continue to apply for wages paid to 28 February 2022 that are eligible for the subsidy.
You must report and apply the full rates of employer and employee PRSI as normal. On receipt of payroll submissions, Revenue will apply a reduced rate of 0.5% employer's PRSI for eligible employees for whom a subsidy is payable.
Revenue will revise monthly employer PRSI liabilities accordingly.