Are You Self-Employed and Looking to Claim the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS)?
Friday evening the Government website updated its information about how to access the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS)
The scheme will allow you to claim a taxable grant of 80% of your average monthly trading profits, paid out in a single instalment covering 3 months, and capped at £7,500 altogether. This is a temporary scheme, but it may be extended.
If you receive the grant you can continue to work, start a new trade or take on other employment including voluntary work.
Remember the grant will be subject to Income Tax and self-employed National Insurance.
Firstly, in order to qualify for this scheme, you must meet the following criteria:
Were you trading in 2018/19 and submitted your tax return for 2018/19 prior to 23 April 2020?
Were you trading in 2019/20?
Do you intend to continue trading in 2020/21?
Have you lost profits as a result of COVID-19?
We had hoped that as agents we would be able to make the claim for SEISS on your behalf, but this has now been clarified, and each individual will have to make the claim themselves.
The online service you’ll use to claim is not available yet. HMRC will aim to contact you by mid May 2020 if you’re eligible, to invite you to claim using the GOV.UK online service. Payment will be made by early June 2020 if your claim is approved.
Please use this time to get everything ready so you can make your claim as soon as possible.
You will need the following:
Unique tax payers reference (UTR)
National Insurance number
Bank Account details
Government Gateway ID and password
Your UTR and NI number can be found on your tax return documents we send to you each year or any correspondence from HMRC
A Government Gateway account needs to be set up if you do not already have one.
Instructions on how to create government gateway account
Go to HMRC’s login page.
Click the GREEN sign in button.
Click “Create sign in details”
Enter your email address where asked.
You will then be emailed a confirmation code. Use this code to confirm your email address.
You will then be issued with a User ID for your government gateway account. Go to HMRC's login page.
If you have lost your Government ID or password please use the link below, unfortunately this is something we do not have access to, so you will need to retrieve yourselves.
If you are having difficulties then HMRC are open Mon-Friday 8-4pm on 0300 200 3310
A polite request, as you will appreciate, we are all working from individual homes and continuing to keep both ourselves and clients up to date with the current situation, which appears to be changing daily, alongside our normal VAT/Accounts and payroll duties. As a result, we would be most grateful if you would do all possible at this time to locate the information required as opposed to contact us for information that should be accessible, as what may seem a small amount of information for the individual client soon amounts across all our client base.
However, this does not mean that we are not here should you need to contact us.