Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of a Real Time Information (RTI) cut-off date for 2018-19 for company directors who have a history of receiving part of their income through a salary paid annually, where the RTI is usually after 19 March in any given year.

For an employee to be eligible they must have been notified to HMRC on a real-time information (RTI) submission on or before 19 March 2020.

Those paid annually are eligible to claim, as long as they meet the relevant conditions including being notified to HMRC on an RTI submission on or before 19 March 2020, which relates to a payment of earnings in the 2019/20 tax year.

Anyone paid annually and notified on an RTI submission after that date will not be eligible for the scheme, which puts them in the same position as those who are paid more frequently and were not notified to HMRC on or before 19 March.

The 19 March date allows as many people as possible to be included by going right up to the day before the announcement and mitigates the risk of fraud that existed as soon as the scheme became public.