Employer (MPF)

4 Key Points

1. In general, employers can apply for wage subsidies for the following categories of employees
   - Regular employees¹ under Master Trust Schemes and Industry Schemes for whom mandatory contributions have been made by their employers. Casual employees are excluded.
   - Employees aged 65 or above under Master Trust Schemes and Industry Schemes for whom voluntary contributions have been made by their employers / trustee has their salary information OR 65 or above with an MPF account without voluntary contribution / salary information (a wage subsidy of $5,000 per month for 65+)
2. The amount of subsidy will be calculated based on 50% of the relevant income paid in the "specified month", with a cap at $18,000² per month. The maximum subsidy per employee per month is $9,000, for 6 months. There will be 2 tranches of application.
3. The relevant income of the contribution records of employees with employer mandatory contribution fully settled for the contribution period(s) falling within the specified month” will be used for the above calculation.
4. Employers will be required to provide an undertaking not to implement redundancy during the subsidy period and to spend all the subsidies on paying wages to their employees.

    ¹ An employee who is at least 18 but under 65 years of age and has been employed in any industry for a continuous period of 60 days or more.
    ² Median income in Q2 2019

Application of Second Tranche

The second tranche will be open for application from 31 August to 13 September 2020, which basically adopt the same eligibility criteria in the first tranche for employers.

Application of First Tranche

• MPF accounts of employers and employees should have been set up on or before 31 March 2020 (cannot be backdated to that date or any earlier dates), whom contributions have been settled on or before 7 May.
• Specified month: Employers can choose any one month from December 2019 to March 2020 as the "specified month" for the purpose of calculating the subsidy.
• March 2020 is chosen as the reference month. The number of employed employees in March will be compared with the number of paid employees in June, July and August.

Note: Application details of the second tranche is subject to government announcement later.

Application Procedure for Employers

Employer	Please prepare the following information prior to application： Business registration MPF scheme name ("BCT (MPF) Pro Choice" / "BCT (MPF) Industry Choice")　and employer participating plan number (11 digits, e.g. 00012345678) Choose any one month from December 2019 to March 2020 as the "specified month" for the purpose of calculating the subsidy Scanned copy of bank statement
Gov't Appointed Processing Agent	Employers are required to submit online application via the official ESS portal Select "specified month" Sign undertaking Authorise the gov't appointed processing agent to receive data directly from BCT to verify the information
BCT	Send an "MPF record certificate" to the processing agent directly Relevant ESS information will be provided by BCT upon request, for employers' reference
Gov't Appointed Processing Agent	Perform vetting of the application
Employer	The government will disburse the subsidy to eligible employers

Timeline