COVID-19 Financial Assistance Options

Over this last week we hope we have supported and helped you understand just what Stage 4 restrictions mean to you and your business. Information and practical solutions regarding COVID Safe plans, COVID SWMS and Permitted Worker Permits was provided to all of our users, and to the best of our knowledge, this remains current. You no doubt still have concerns about the impact Stage 4 will have on your business and employees. Many are faced with decisions regarding which staff they choose to keep on, or to furlough. However, there may be some help at hand! As announced last Friday, JobKeeper has been amended and will now be more accessible to all Victorian tradies from September onwards. The exact revised rules are still yet to be released, so for now we are still using COVID Version 1 and calculations on a predictive sales basis. However, even under these rules we can comfortably state that most, if not all, Victorian tradies experiencing Lockdown Stage 4 restrictions will suffer a 35% fall in the month of August. This means that for August, all of these businesses would be eligible for Job Keeper. If your business can show a drop in business for July, you may also be eligible for Job Keeper payments for last month. However, applications for July close on the 14th of August. To be entitled to Job Keeper, you must be paying employees a minimum of $1,500 per fortnight for the month of August.  If you qualify, payments of $3,000 per employee will be made to your business during the first week of the following month. The further good news is that once you have established your eligibility for Job Keeper, you may also be eligible for the Victorian Grant, which at this stage, should run until the end of the Stage 4 Lockdown period. To get the grant, you need to meet the following conditions:

• You are a Pty Ltd company or a Trust
• Registered for GST
• Have a Work Cover certificate to show you have rateable employees and know the yearly turnover for 2020, which should be available on your GST returns.
• Must have your main operational office in Victoria

This grant proposes financial assistance of:

• $10,000 for businesses in the metro area
• $5,000 fo businesses outside of the metro area

Check here for more information on the grant. In addition to Job Keeper and the Victorian Grant, there are also substantial favourable apprentice support schemes. Click here for more information from the Department of Education, Skills and Employment. Click here for more information from Business Gov website. While these solutions aren’t immediate, we hope it offers some comfort that help will shortly be available.

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