The blog today has an update for you on the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act (COIDA) relief, and its annual return of earnings. Additionally, we have received a clarification for employers who applied to COVID-19 TERS for their foreign workers.

Foreign Workers: COVID-19 TERS

It has become apparent that foreign employees who have been enrolled for the Temporary Employee/Employer Relief Scheme (TERS) have had their applications rejected. This appears to be due to the TERS system not being able to recognise passport numbers. If this is the case for you and your foreign employees have not received payment, you must simply submit proof to the UIF of the employee’s contributions to UIF, where they shall then process the payments on their side.

For each foreign employee who has not been counted in the scheme, you need to send:

1. The employee’s UI 19 Form (Information on where to find this can be found on our help site page, linked here).
2. The consolidated UI 19 Form, submitted monthly by the employer.
3. Proof of payroll for the period between January to March 2020. This could be met by the UI 19 form mentioned in point 2, but to be safe we would recommend payslips for the employee also.

All of the above information needs to be sent to covid19compliance@labour.gov.za.

Return of Earnings Submission Deadline

In our previous blog on 11 March, we informed you that the deadline for completing your Return of Earnings, or W.As.8, was pushed back from 31 March to 31 May. We can now inform you that this date has been pushed back further still to 30 June 2020.

Relief Measures in Light of COVID-19

To help lessen the financial burden on employers during this period of economic uncertainty, and to encourage compliance with COIDA, the Compensation Fund has announced the following measures:

1. Normally, late payment of assessment results in penalties and interest accruing until the amount is settled. The Compensation Fund has announced an exemption from penalties and interest for a 6 month period, between 29 April and 30 September 2020. 

Note: This does not alter any amounts due, it merely exempts employers from penalties and interest for overdue payments of assessment for the period.

1. For employers partaking in an instalments arrangement, the standard requirement of an upfront 20% deposit has been lifted.

If you wish to partake in an instalment arrangement, you can do this by sending a request to cfdebtors@labour.gov.za. 

We hope that this information proves useful to you. If you have any queries on how the above relates to payroll and the SimplePay system, please feel free to get in touch with our customer support team at support@simplepay.co.za.

Keep well. Stay home. Stay safe.

Team SimplePay