Furloughing nanny

[aupresdemonarbre]

www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/pdfs/uksi_20200350_en.pdf

My read that of the covid restrictions regulations is that they don’t prohibit nannies from coming to work. This means we can’t furlough our nanny right? She’s not coming in and we had thought we’d get compensation if we kept paying her. My husband is taking unpaid leave to look after our baby - can afford to pay her for one or two months without compensation but not over the long term. Are people in this situation firing their nannies? :(

I'm keeping mine on and paying her. She isn't coming. Will reassess in a month or so though.

You’re right, nanny employers are not covered by the 80 percent scheme. That may change.

Options at the moment are

• fully paid leave - use up the annual leave that you can nominate if you can, but that’s probably only 2 weeks
• give notice. Remember if she’s been with you 2 years or more it would need to be a redundancy so you’d have notice pay and redundancy pay.
• agree with her that you’ll keep her on, but pay a reduced amount that you both agree on. That way she still has some income, and a job to come back to when things settle down, but it’s more affordable for you.

Remember depending on age of your children she should be Skyping them to read them stories/chat while she’s at home.

@8by8
You are wrong. HMRC have confirmed that anyone who is PAYE is covered under the scheme. If the parent is not earning any money and had to lay the nanny off eg the job doesnt exist. What's not so clear is if non key workers still earning fall into the employer category.

Do you have a link to that? Our payroll provider told us yesterday we aren’t covered?

Go onto BAPN Facebook page.

Where are people getting their information from? Martin Lewis answered last night that nannies are entitled. So have nanny matters, childcare.co.uk and I'm sure many others.

Ok I’ll look again - as of yesterday afternoon our payroll provider was saying not covered.

Out of interest, who is your payroll company?
We, as nannies, have been working hard ALL week to try and get the payroll companies to just pull together at this time and give the correct and same information. It is really stressful having contradictory advice.

@Hugglespuffed can you link to that analysis please? For me it seems that the issues are (1) nannies can legally continue to work so are not being prevented from doing so by the covid crisis; (2) nanny employers are not businesses or other organisations who are the ones who seem to be contemplated by the furloughing scheme - www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-for-wage-costs-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme

Nanny pay are advising that point 2 won’t apply on the basis of what is apparently the understanding of their contacts at HMRC, but who knows? It also doesn’t get round point 1...

Has anyone seen any government advice

@aupresdemonarbre Martin Lewis said on his show last night. I can't tell you exactly when as I only saw the clip on Facebook but I believe it was towards the end.

www.childcare.co.uk/childminders/coronavirus
Please follow that link, a few questions down, it asks about nannies. And gives an answer.

The thing is, we can't legally still work, we haven't really been mentioned anywhere. We can't follow the 2 metre rule which is government advice.
I'm not sure about your second point. I'm not going to screenshot my emails but I had an email from nannymatter today said we are eligible. Why wouldn't we? We are employed.

Really hoping so 🤞

If you find out any more info please keep us updated.

I'm so confused about this situation. My husband and I are really struggling. We both work full-time and our employers are being difficult.

I have found so many contradictory articles. Can my nanny still work? She drives 2 mins to us. None of us are symptomatic. We are strictly observing the social distancing rules.

Keep an eye on this document, it might be useful:
www.gov.uk/guidance/check-if-you-could-be-covered-by-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme

The other guide that aupresdemonarbre has already linked to is
www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-for-wage-costs-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme
This guide says "Any UK organisation with employees can apply,"
"You must have created and started a PAYE payroll scheme on or before 28 February 2020 and have a UK bank account."

In my view this means that it will include everyone who has a PAYE scheme setup. I cannot see how HMRC would determine if a PAYE scheme belongs to a company or an individual. Implementing a system to do the grant is going to be hard enough for HMRC without also having to determine if a PAYE scheme is being used to pay a domestic employee or not. Sure HMRC when the PAYE scheme was first setup asked what it was for but did they retain that information in a database which HMRC can now cross reference? Who knows... maybe, maybe not. Is it worth them implementing a system which does that cross reference check, maybe, maybe not. My gut feeling is that they will implement as easy a system to create as possible, then add in employers they do not expect to be claiming, such as public sector organisations for which the document already contains information saying that claims from them is not expected, except in a small number of cases.

At this time, nobody knows for sure that the situation will be. Once HMRC have got the portal working, then claims for the grant can start being done and by that time there should be more detailed guidance available.

@hugglespuffed
My reading of the regulations (linked in my op) is that nannying is not one of the jobs which can’t be done under the lockdown. So it comes down to whether the government will pay out for workers who are furloughed because the employer doesn’t want them to come in because of covid as opposed to those who are furloughed because the covid regulations make it illegal for the business they work at to continue operating. I do have my doubts about whether it will be interpreted this widely but hopefully it will.

I think we will keep paying our nanny until the furloughing scheme is unveiled in April. If this makes clear we can’t claim we will have to rethink.

I’m reading that the grant will be taxable. Neutral impact to a company/business which gets tax relief then on the outgoing wage but a nanny employer is an individual and obviously cannot set the wage off against anything. So my concern is nanny employers get stung for income tax (payable by the individual employer personally) on top of their tax they pay on their own job. Great deal for a business but lousy for personal employer.

From Gov website:
Tax Treatment of the Coronavirus Job Retention Grant
Payments received by a business under the scheme are made to offset these deductible revenue costs. They must therefore be included as income in the business’s calculation of its taxable profits for Income Tax and Corporation Tax purposes, in accordance with normal principles.

Businesses can deduct employment costs as normal when calculating taxable profits for Income Tax and Corporation Tax purposes.

Published 26 March 2020

@PJPests does this mean if a nanny employer got the grant, they’d then get taxed on it as if it was income?
This is all so confusing and frustrating!!

Since I’m likely to ask for unpaid leave as it’s near on impossible to work with 3 young children around, and our nanny is not working (stating that she cannot remain 2m away, her insurance is void, and we shouldn’t be mixing households), we’ve said we’ll put her in the furlough plan, pay her for the next month and then reassess if it becomes clear that we don’t claim.
This tax question just adds another complication.

Can’t claim... not don’t claim.

Our nanny has her own kids which she always brings (fine, we agreed that and like the company for our kids). At the moment she isn’t working and still on full pay. We are really struggling to wfh full time with 2 kids under 7, might need to take unpaid leave (currently juggling with a lot of evening work on top of daytime stuff to try and keep on top of it all - it’s exhausting 🙁)

I’ve assumed we can’t call her in (as she would have to bring her kids which doesn’t feel right, plus it would be even harder to wfh with 4 under 7’s in the house). She has said she’s quite happy to carry on working.

Furlough info from nannypaye is as mentioned above nannies might not be eligible as domestic employees, not business employees. Not sure what to do to be honest - if it’s not for too long, I think we can keep going. If it’s months then we can’t but really don’t want to lose her 🙁

@adagio any chance your nanny can have your children at her house? Frankly risk wise I don't see much difference at this stage - both households would either have the virus or not by last weekend anyway (provided everyone is super vigilant and following the rules now).

Not being flippant but just think about everyone's approach a couple of weeks ago, going out and shaking hands at work etc. I was horrified (I lived through Hong Kong while they had SARS - their trajectory of cases is so much flatter than Europe because they reduced infection risk so much earlier).

So I can't see that continued exposure to nanny/children makes a difference provided everyone in both households is mega vigilant and goes over and above current advice.

@ilovewinterpansies to be honest that’s normally what she does in school holidays etc (her preference) and what she did before full lockdown early last week (when my DH was still in office too so we all I thought travel to/from work was ok) but her DH was not happy. I would love for her to still take the kids, it I don’t want to cause angst with her DH.

@adagio if she's happy to work and you're happy for her to work and she doesn't need to use public transport, why can't she?

I don't think the guidance is sufficiently clear that it's a clear cut thing that nannies can't work. I completely understand that some are interpreting the rules as no nannying unless employer is a key worker but that's not what's been said.

I know I'll probably get flamed for this but I'm just saying it as I see it.

@ConfusedbyCovid yes that’s how it reads. The guidance isn’t helped by referring to “employers” (which we are) and “businesses” (which we are not) interchangeably. So yes presently the concern is IF we can claim it, WE pay tax on it. At top of our marginal rate. They may exempt us perhaps but not had that detail as yet. I’m wary of agreeing to it unless and until I know exactly what I’m agreeing to.

Those who are furloughing their nannies, are you offering them on 80% salaries or higher?