Tens of thousands of employers have to repay a total of €2.3 billion in coronasteun. The advance they received under the temporary NOW scheme turned out to be too high after a final calculation.
With the NOW scheme, the Dutch government wanted to prevent massive job losses due to the first coronal shockdown. In proportion to their lost turnover, employers were reimbursed part of the wage costs by the government, so they did not have to resort to redundancies.
Based on final calculations of lost earnings, the UWV is now determining how much money employers are actually entitled to. There are also employers who received too little and to whom benefit agency UWV will still transfer €455 million.
Of the 139,500 employers who received advance payments between March and May 2020, 90,000 (71 per cent) will receive a clawback. Nearly 36,000 employers will actually receive more NOW money.