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.

Who qualifies for the SEISS scheme?

• You must be self-employed or a partner in a partnership
• You must have traded in 2019-20 and 2020-21 and submitted your 2019-20 tax return by the 2 March 2021.
• You must currently be trading AND impacted by reduced demand due to COVID 19 OR you have been trading AND are temporarily unable to do so due to COVID 19.

How do you calculate the Self Employment Income Support Scheme?

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.

How the fifth grant differs to the previous four

To make your claim, you’ll need to have 2 different turnover figures. You’ll need to work out your turnover for:

• April 2020 to April 2021
• either 2019 to 2020 or 2018 to 2019

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:

• 2018 to 2019
• 2017 to 2018
• 2016 to 2017

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.