Revenue claws back €50m so far in wage subsidy compliance programme

The Revenue Commissioners has to date clawed back €50 million in a compliance programme focusing on the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS).

New figures provided by the Minister for Finance, Paschal Donohoe in a written Dáil reply to Labour finance spokesman Ged Nash confirm the compliance programme has to date covered 7,223 employers or 14 per cent of the 51,450 employers who registered for the EWSS.

Mr Donohoe stated: “Of these, 2,584 were Revenue initiated contacts, and 4,639 were voluntary amendments made by employers where they were liable to repay EWSS subsidies to Revenue.”

Mr Donohoe said the total amount collected to date by Revenue is €50 million, with €7.3 million remaining due to be collected.

He added: “€6.4 million of the outstanding amount is included in the debt warehouse.”

The compliance programme concerning the EWSS follows a compliance programme relating to the earlier Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) which continued to the end of August 2020.

Mr Donohoe confirmed that to date, compliance checks have been completed in respect of 64,710 employers, representing more than 99.6 per cent of TWSS cases, with the remainder in progress.

He said that the compliance checks have shown “significantly high levels of compliance with the TWSS requirements by employers with 1,523 employers, approximately 2 per cent of cases, having to repay the TWSS subsidy as they failed to meet the requirements of the scheme”.

He said settlements in these cases totalled €27.7 million.

Reconciliation

Mr Donohoe stated that following a reconciliation exercise conducted at the end of June this year in respect of more than 67,000 employer registrations, the overall TWSS liability due is €309 million.

He said:”There is €79.5 million currently outstanding with approximately €63.5 million of that amount included in the debt warehouse.

In relation to the EWSS spend by Government, Mr Donohoe said that to date, payments of over €4.76 billion and PRSI credit of over €750 million have been granted to 51,400 employers in respect of 656,900 workers.

He said that there will be no cliff-edge to the EWSS and it is to be extended until the end of December this year. Decisions in relation to the configuration of the EWSS in the final quarter of 2021 will be addressed shortly, he added.

He said no decisions have been taken in relation to the future of the scheme beyond the end of December.