A detailed review of the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy
("CEWS") can be found in our updated detailed review of
the Federal Economic Measures
here.
However, there have recently been two new announcements that we
believe are worth an extra alert.
Cost-sharing arrangements
First, the CRA has finally indicated that the CEWS is available
in cost-sharing arrangements
("CSA").
In many CSAs (often used by doctors and other professionals),
there is more than one employer since there are several employers
in the arrangement to share the payroll costs and, often, an entity
(e.g. clinic) is used to split the costs. Prior to the July 2020
changes to CEWS, the employers could not qualify for CEWS because
they did not have a payroll account as of March 15, 2020, only the
entity/clinic did. However, often the entity/clinic could not show
the necessary drop in revenues, even if the corporations sharing
costs did have the necessary drop in revenue.
