Good news! The Government has announced that there will be another grant to support the self employed. It is called the Self Employment Income Support Scheme Fifth Grant (SEISS). This is likely to be the final SEISS grant and will cover the months from May to September 2021. This will be open to claimants from late July 2021. You must make your claim on or before 30 September 2021 to qualify for this grant. As with previous grants, it will be taxable but not subject to VAT and will be paid in one instalment.
The calculation of your grant will be worked out as follows:
Your trading profits from your 2019-20 tax return must not be more than £50,000 and at least equal to your non-trading income (e.g., employment, pension, etc)
If you don’t meet these criteria, HMRC will then look at the tax years 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20.
It’s up to you whether you claim for the SEISS
When you claim you must declare the following:
You are intending to continue trading AND you have reason to believe from May 2021 to September 2021 your trading profits will be significantly reduced due to reduced business demand, capacity, activity or inability to trade due to COVID 19.
You are expected to make an honest assessment about whether you reasonably believe your business will have a significant reduction in profits due to any of the above.
You must keep evidence to back up your claim that shows how your business has been impacted by coronavirus resulting in less business activity than you would normally have expected for those months.
To make your claim, you’ll need to have 2 different turnover figures. You’ll need to work out your turnover for:
HMRC will compare these figures to work out how much you’ll get.
HMRC will not ask you for any turnover figures if you started trading in 2019 to 2020 and did not trade in the following tax years:
How much you’ll get
If you need to tell HMRC about your turnover:
There are 2 levels of grant. HMRC will work out your grant amount based on how much your turnover is down by after they’ve compared your 2 turnover figures.
If you do not need turnover figures to claim
You’ll get 80% of 3 months’ average trading profits. The maximum grant amount is £7,500.
Additional Links
To learn more about the deducations and schemes that the government offers, do check out our blog: https://farnborough-accountants.co.uk/capital-allowances-super-deduction
Post originally published in June 2021, updated 4th August 2021.