They expand aid to pay wages, without a cap on workers

Given the increasing difficulties for companies to face the payment of their workers’ wages, the Government decided to modify the Emergency Work and Production Assistance Program for employers (ATP) to include more companies, simplify procedures and grant higher amounts of aid.

The decision was made official by Decree 376/2020, published this Monday in the Official bulletin, in which differences in access to benefits are eliminated according to the number of workers that had originally been established.

Thus, there will no longer be a complementary allocation up to 100 dependents (with progressive amounts according to the amount of each company) and a Repro for the largest, but now a single aid is established for all companies that access the program.

The cap of 60 employees was also removed to obtain the reduction of contributions. The amounts of the allowance will depend on the salary.

Another modification was the period during which the company has to show that it was affected in its activity. Instead of starting on March 20, 2020, it was now established as of March 12, 2020.

Period. Likewise, the program may be extended until June 30 in general or until October for particular cases that are affected, even when the general compulsory isolation is finished.

In addition, a zero-rate credit will be implemented with a state guarantee for monotributistas and self-employed, which will include the payment of the monthly fee to the Federal Administration of Public Revenue (Afip) for three months.

Benefits

In this way, the program, already enabled by Afip under the ATP web service, is as follows.

Employers were required to register until April 16. According to the treasury, more than 420 thousand have already registered and around 70 percent automatically accessed the benefits. For March, these are limited to the two-month extension of the payment of employer contributions to Sipa.

For April and the following months, you can now access one or more of the following grants:

• Postponement or reduction of 95 percent of employer contributions to the Argentine Integrated Social Security System (Sipa).
• Complementary Salary. The State will pay 50 percent of the wages of all of all the workers in relation to dependence on the private sector of the affected companies.
• Zero rate credit for monotributistas and self-employed.
• Unemployment benefits. The minimum will be six thousand and the maximum 10 thousand pesos.

Wage aid

The complementary salary replaces the two benefits established by the original decree of the program (332/2020).

Now it is established that the State, via the National Social Security Administration (Anses), will pay 50 percent of the net remuneration of all workers (previously there were only those with a collective agreement).

The floor will be equivalent to a vital and mobile minimum wage (16,875 pesos), with a cap of up to two (33,750). That is to say that in some cases of low wages, the amount of aid will be more than half and at the other extreme, it will be less.

This replaces the compensatory allowance, which was for employers up to 100 workers, with a maximum aid of a minimum wage, and a progressive amount according to size, and the special Repro for companies with more than 100 employees.

On the other hand, the requirement to obtain the crisis prevention procedure (a procedure in the Ministry of Labor) was also eliminated so that those with more than 60 workers could access the reduction of 95 percent of contributions to Sipa. Now, it will be the same for everyone.

The new complementary salary will be taken as payment on account of the remuneration or the amount to be paid in cases of companies that have suspensions in agreement with the union (according to article 223 bis of the Labor Contract Law, the only modality allowed during isolation. ).

Monotributistas y self-employed

For those responsible for the Monotributo regime and those who are self-employed, and meet the requirements of the ATP program, the Government arranged a loan at zero rate, with a subsidy of 100 percent of the total financial cost (CFT).

Up to 150 thousand pesos will be financed, with a cap depending on the category of monotributistas (a quarter of the upper limit of each gross income). It will be disbursed in three monthly installments and will be returned with six months of grace and a total of 12 months.

The loan amount will be added to the monthly fee of the Monotributo or self-employed, which will be deposited in the Afip.

The CFT subsidy will be provided by the National Productive Development Fund (Fondep), of the Ministry of Productive Development, which will have 11 billion pesos of contributions for this purpose.

In addition, the loans, which the banks will channel through a credit card, as indicated by the Central Bank, will be guaranteed by the Argentine Guarantee Fund (Fogar), without requiring counter-guarantees. For this, it will have a sum of 26 billion pesos.