Self-employment income support scheme!
The Government’s self-employment income support scheme is going to be launched next week, with a staggered roll out to those who are eligible.
The main conditions for eligibility can be summarised as follows;
- Your self-employment needs to have commenced before 5 April 2019
- You should still have been trading when the Covid-19 Pandemic struck in March 2020 and you plan to carry on trading
- Your business has been adversely affected by the pandemic
- Your trading profits should exceeds income from other sources
- Your profits in 2019 should not exceed £50,000, or your average trading profits over the 3 year period to 5 April 2019 should not exceed £50,000 per annum
There is a web page where you can check whether HMRC consider you are entitled to submit a claim. This can be found here: https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/self-employment-support/enter-unique-taxpayer-reference. This web page should confirm a time and date that the scheme will be first available for use.
The government’s intention will be to pay a single lump sum payment to those who qualify, which should be paid 6 business days after the submission of the claim. The payment should be equivalent to 80% of 3 months’ worth of trading profits, taken as an average from profits reported on your tax returns during the 3 year period to 5 April 2019. The maximum payment available will be capped at £7,500.
Regrettably, despite being registered agents we are unable to submit any claims on behalf of our clients. Claimants will be required to access their own individual account on the Government Gateway. If you have not yet set up an account on the government gateway, and you do not yet have a government gateway ID number, we would strongly recommend you register now. You will need to answer security questions to prove your identity, which could be regarding your driving licence or passport. You will also need to know your unique taxpayer reference and your national insurance number. You can register at this web page: https://www.gov.uk/log-in-register-hmrc-online-services
If the procedure for making the claims is similar to that for the employment support scheme, we expect the claim process itself should be fairly straight forward. We do not yet know if HMRC will automatically calculate what you are entitled to claim, but the indications are that this could be the case, as grant entitlement is determined from information previously submitted in tax returns.
Whilst we will be unable to help with the actual claim process, we will of course be pleased to assist should you have any queries or require any information to help you with this. You can call us on 01243 782 423 or head to our contact page.
Stay safe!