Recommendation 9

HMRC’s investment in its RTI system meant that, unlike SEISS, eligibility for CJRS was based on more up-to-date data. The RTI system is used on a monthly basis by employers to submit tax information on their workforce to HMRC. HMRC said that this information was vital in enabling it to run the CJRS safely. It meant that any employee on an employer’s Pay-As-You-Earn system at 19 March 2020, the day before the first national lockdown, could potentially be furloughed.19 Similarly, with the latest national lockdown, eligibility for the CJRS extension is based on employees on employer payrolls on 30 October.20 The downside to using RTI data in CJRS is that employers could submit claims based on data they submitted after the scheme was announced, whereas the use of old self-employed taxpayer data in SEISS prevented that problem. This increased the risk that employers would deliberately misstate their positions to increase their CJRS grant awards.21 Evaluation of the initial schemes