Government Announce Self-employment Income Support Scheme
The Self-employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) will support self-employed individuals (including members of partnerships) whose income has been negatively impacted by COVID-19. The scheme will provide a grant to self-employed individuals or partnerships, worth 80% of their profits up to a cap of £2,500 per month
HMRC will use the average profits from tax returns in 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19 to calculate the size of the grant. The scheme will be open to those where the majority of their income comes from self-employment and who have profits of less than £50,000. The scheme will be open for an initial three months with people able to make their first claim by the beginning of June.
You can find more information on eligibility and how to access the scheme here.
Self-employment Income Support Scheme Frequently Asked Questions
Key features-
A taxable grant set at 80% of the self-employed persons average monthly taxable profits over the last three years to a maximum of £2,500pm the scheme will be open for 3 months
To be eligible business must show that the majority of their work is through self-employment
Businesses with an average taxable profit of more than £50,000 pa will not be eligible for the fund
If trading as self-employed for less than 3 years then HMRC will look at taxable profits over a shorter period of time but not less than one year as the minimum requirement is a 2019 tax
returnHMRC is working up the scheme and anticipate that it will be ready by June 202
Any self-employed person who missed the January tax return deadline, or has yet to submit their tax return will now have a further 4 weeks from today to get their tax return in so that
they can be included in the schemeHMRC will contact businesses directly and ask them to complete an
application to access the fund
Those with immediate cashflow problems can
apply for the Universal Credit Advance Payment Scheme and should not have
to wait 5 weeks to access funding
The fund will be backdated to 1st
March
Businesses with taxable profits that exceed £50,000pa and
those who have been self-employed for less than 12 months (and have
therefore not been operating long enough to have submitted a tax
return) will not be eligible for the fund.