Do you qualify for the 5th Self Employment Income Support Scheme Grant?

As the month end approaches we are almost at the point where sole traders and members of partnerships can apply for the fifth and final grant under the SEISS scheme.

The questions are who qualifies? How much will they get? and How do they apply?

So the short answer is that many of the factors or conditions of the previous grants still apply. They are:-

  • The grant is for those whose incomes are from self employment (not those working in Limited companies)

  • For those with incomes below £50,000 where self employed income makes up the majority of income received.

  • You must have filed a tax return for 2019-20 by 31st March 2021 and intend to carry on your business or trade beyond the point of making the claim.

This grant covers the period 1st May 2021 to 30th September 2021 and when making a claim you need to have been impacted by Covid-19 and continue to struggle. Its not for those who are back on track now.

OK So we are happy that we qualify - what next ?

There is a change from the previous grants when it comes to calculating your entitlement. For the first 4 grants you either qualified or you didn’t and then a basic calulation was applied to your average profits. For grant 5 there is an extra stage that is designed to distinguish between different levels of distress. You could get 80% of your average quarterly profits capped ay £7500 (this ws grants 1-4) but you could also just get 30%. There is a big drop - so beware.

So are you in the 80% category or the 30% category?

This depends on how much your turnover fell from 2019/20 to 2020/2021. If it didn’t fall then you get nothing, zip ,nada not a bean.

If it fell by less than 30% then good news, you get 30% capped at £2850.

If it fell by more than 30% the you get the full 80% capped at £7500.

Important

If your 2019-20 income was an anomaly then you can use the 2018-19 figures but you will need to be able to justify why the 2019-20 figures were low and therfore would not be reasonable to use them.

Now, you need to know the small print. (big print here)

  1. Turnover is revenue from customers

  2. If you have more than one self employment you have to aggregate them not look at just the main self employment

  3. If your tax return had a turnover for a period other than 12 months due to an accounting date change you have to annualise it to get a fair comparison.

  4. Partnerships must use the turnover for the whole partnership and not the share of profit for the partners.

  5. You should not include revenue from any SEISS grants received in your turnover. It was a grant not from a customer (see point 1)

  6. You should not include any income from the “eat out to help out” scheme - so don’t just use the VAT returns to calculate turnover as this income may be reflected in till receipts and reports. It was a subsidy not from a customer (remember point 1 ?)

If you need help to calculate the turnover figures then call us and we can suggest a way to get an accurate figure.

The good news is that you have until 30th September to claim !

Hope this was helpful.

Barrie Jenkins