Canada’s people friendly government has once again extended their helping hand towards the businesses and workers affected by the global economic slowdown. Canada govt. acknowledges that more and more businesses are opening but they need constant support to beat the heat. In order to keep the businesses running and rehiring of the workers, Govt. has extended the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy until Dec 19^th 2020. This doesn’t stop here, they have planned to make it more accessible to support more businesses by creating a top-up for employers who were most affected.

Those eligible businesses who had any dip in revenue during the pandemic outbreak, can now qualify for the wage subsidy. For the next period of wage subsidy, Govt. has opened the applications and launched an updated and improved calculator that will help you prepare for the subsidy. What are the changes in the provision?

• Depending on the amount of revenue dropped, the subsidy rate may vary
• If revenue drop was below 30%, you can still qualify and acquire the subsidy to rehire and recover revenue
• Employers who were the most affected for three months, are eligible for higher amount
• The employees who were not paid for 14 or more days, can now be included in the calculation
• For the calculation, you can use the current period’s revenue drop or the previous. if the revenue drop is minimum 30%, your subsidy rate will be at least 75%
• Even if the revenue has not dropped for the claim period, you can qualify if your average revenue has dropped over 50% in the previous three months
• As per the provision, the maximum base subsidy rate is locked at 60% in claim periods 5 and 6, however, it will decline in claim period 7, gradually reducing to 20% in period 9