The Government recently published further guidance on the new Self-Employed Income Support Scheme ...
Here are the guidelines for eligibility:
- Trading profits/partnership profits in 2018-19 are less than £50,000 and more than 50% of your total taxable income comes from self-employed/partnership income.
OR
- Your average trading profits from 2016/17, 2017/18 and 2018/19 are less than £50,000. Again, more than 50% of your total taxable income came from self-employed/partnership income during those tax years.
Sadly, there is no support for those individuals or partnerships that commenced trading after 6th April 2019.
Remember, if you haven't filed your 2018/19 tax return yet you have until this Thursday (23rd April 2020) to get it submitted so you can qualify for the grant. For those who have filed their return on-time, HMRC will not take any amendments made after 26th March 2020 into consideration.
The Self-Employed Income Support Scheme will mirror the Coronovirus Job Retention Scheme for employees. It will provide you with a taxable grant with 80% of your average monthly trading profits over the past three years, which is limited to £2,500 per month. If you have been trading for less than three years, the payment will average over one or two years, depending on the number of tax returns you filed.
Normal tax deductions on your trading expenditure will be included when they calculate your taxable income. This includes:
- Any business expenses deducted through the trading allowance
- Capital allowances used to buy assets used in your business
- Flat rate expenses
However, there will be no deductions for the following:
- Losses carried forward from previous years
- Personal allowances
This thinking should bring a number of people back into the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme where they were previously thought to be excluded.
And finally, those individuals with multiple self-employment will have their profits (and losses) combined and if you started trading part-way through a tax year, there is no part-year relief so your profits will still be averaged over the full 12-month period which may reduce the grant available to you.
If you'd like to find out more about anything I've written here, do call me on 01908 774323 or leave a comment below and let's see how I can help you.