Income support advice from lawyer Kevin Wiener to Ontario lawyers:

Income support advice from lawyer Kevin Wiener to a group of lawyers (as posted by Saba Ahmad on Facebook, March 20, 2020)

Hey folks,

I thought I'd break down the financial supports most relevant to us:

1) Normal EI

If you are an employee and your employer lays you off because of a shortage of work, you can apply for EI. As far as I can tell, it's operating the same as it usually does. You need to have enough hours of insurable earnings to qualify. It will pay you 55% of your insurable income to a maximum of $573 a week.

If you're an employer and you can't make payroll and the Work Sharing Program doesn't work for you (more on that later), the only realistic way to deal with it is to lay off employees so they can go on EI.

There is a one-week waiting period, so if you have to lay workers off you should try to give some pay in lieu of notice to bridge that gap.

Note that this doesn't apply to people who can't work because they're sick or taking care of a relative or kids. Under new legislation just passed, an employer *cannot* lay you off for this reason. They have to give you leave, and you can apply for the Emergency Care Benefit or EI Sickness Benefits (see below).

2) Emergency Care Benefit/EI Sickness Benefits

If you can't work because you are: (a) sick with COVID; (b) quarantined due to COVID; (c) taking care of a sick family member; or (d) have to stay home to take care of kids, you can access this benefit *even if you are self-employed*. This benefit will be available in early April and you will basically need to check off a checkbox every two weeks that you still need it. It will pay up to $900 biweekly for up to 15 weeks.

Alternatively, if you're sick/quarantined with COVID and have enough insurable earnings, you can access EI Sickness Benefits and the one-week waiting period is waived. Like normal EI, this pays 55% of earnings up to $573 a week.

3) Emergency Support Benefit

This is confusingly named very similarly to the Emergency Care Benefit, but it's different. The ESB is going to provide financial support to (a) laid off workers who don't have enough hours for EI; and (b) self-employed workers who don't have enough income to work. Basically anyone not covered by EI. This is going to be the *most* important benefit for many of us as our client work dries up. Details on this benefit aren't out yet, but it's going to be administered through the CRA and will likely have a simple application process. The amount and duration of benefits hasn't yet been made public.

4) Small Business Wage Subsidy

This is to help those of us who might have a bit of difficulty making payroll but haven't had such a severe drop in work that we need to look at Work Share or layoffs. The government is going to subsidize 10% of your payroll, to a maximum $1357 per employee. You can access this benefit *immediately* by reducing your tax withholding for your employees.

5) EI Work Share

If you are an employer of 2 or more employees doing the same job (e.g. two associate lawyers) but don't have enough work to keep them on payroll, rather than laying one of them off, you can apply to the EI Work Share program. The employees have to agree. Basically you reduce their collective workload by up to 60% and EI benefits will cover for the reduced hours. The main problem is you need 2 employees with the same job description, the application process is pretty onerous, and it can take up to 30 days to get approval. But if you work at a firm with 10+ associates, you may want to flag this for them.

6) Business Credit Availability Program

The government is working with lenders to increase the amount of credit available to creditworthy businesses. Talk to your banker to see what lending options might be available.

7) Tax Deferrals

Taxes are not due until August 31, 2020. You can still file the return right away to get benefits, but you don't have to pay anything (this includes any installment payments that you would otherwise owe). Take advantage of this; it's basically an interest-free loan.

?? GSTC/CCBC

For any of us who currently receive the GST Credit and/or the Canada Child Benefit Credit, those are being enhanced. If you are eligible for these benefits, make sure to file your tax return on time so you can get them.

9) Student Loan Freeze

The federal government has frozen student loans and there is no interest accruing for the next 6 months. I believe this is done automatically; there's no application process you can just stop paying your student loans for the next 6 months with no consequences. This also operates like an interest-free loan.

10) Eviction Moratorium

If, despite all the financial benefits, you are still short on cash to cover all your personal expenses, as an emergency last resort you can stop paying rent. During the COVID crisis, there is a moratorium on all evictions. Keep in mind, not paying rent doesn't make the debt disappear. However even when things are back to normal, the LTB can delay or deny an eviction unless it would be unjust. As long as you start making rent payments again once things have normalized and have a payment plan to cover back rent, I expect the LTB would not evict you. However, this is by far the riskiest way to get cash so I would only look at it if every other way to get liquidity (including borrowing money from the bank).

If you're a homeowner rather than a renter, many banks are willing to let you skip some mortgage payments without penalty (but the interest keeps running). Talk to your bank about this.