ATO Extends JobKeeper Monthly Declaration Deadline
May 26, 2020
Businesses will now have an additional seven days to make the JobKeeper business monthly declaration.
The Commissioner of Taxation has now granted a deferral of the due date for the JobKeeper scheme monthly declaration to the 14th of each month, commencing from June.
As such, the business monthly declaration for reimbursement of JobKeeper payments for the month of May will now need to be completed by 14 June.
The extension builds on the JobKeeper legislative rules, which stipulated that the monthly declaration needed to be lodged within seven days of the end of the previous month.
The extended deadline was meant to give businesses more time to ensure current and projected GST turnover figures were reasonable, but the ATO has noted that the later the monthly declaration is lodged, the later businesses will be reimbursed for its JobKeeper payments.
The Institute of Public Accountants’ Tony Greco said that while the deferred deadline was welcome news for time-strapped businesses.
“The ATO was saying [the monthly declaration] is just to see how we are tracking and it is more for statistical reasons and they’re not going to hold you to it, but then the Tax Practitioners Board came out and said you can’t just put numbers in there without making sure they are reasonable, so we had a little bit of a stoush between the two regulators.
“By pushing it to 14 days, it gives the business & the accountants a bit more time to assess the figures because there needs to be some effort into putting the forecast figures for the month ahead, and even for large organisations, that can be quite problematic in this environment,” Mr Greco told Accountants Daily.
The monthly declaration is not a retest of an entity’s eligibility, but it requires businesses to calculate their current and projected GST turnover, and confirm their eligible employees, particularly where staff change or leave their employment.
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