A good discussion on @Moneybox of a difficult and important issue around so-called bonuses paid to umbrella company employees, including tens or hundreds of thousands of teachers. THREAD bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0…
The reality is, it is a bit wet of umbrella companies to pay only 80% of minimum wage to staff. Describing the top up payment as a "bonus" or "discretionary" doesn't make it so. Hard for me to imagine a court (in a normal case) holding the employee has no right to it.
It's also rather risky for the umbrella only to pay 80% of minimum wage to furloughed staff because (as I read the legislation) if they pay their staff *less than* the legislation mandates (which I think they are doing) they are entitled to recover nothing.
That having been said, there is no tax avoidance here and staff who should qualify for furlough on 80% of their real pay are only receiving 80% of minimum wage (far too little to live on). The case for HMRC to issue guidance to make this clear seems pretty overwhelming to me.
