If your business was adversely affected by COVID-19 in the period 1 March 2020 to 31 May 2020 and you have not yet made your grant claim, please note the deadline for making the claim for this period is 13 July 2020.
A second and final grant will be made available in August 2020, however only businesses that have been adversely affected by COVID-19 on or after 14 July 2020 will be entitled to make this claim.
Who can claim?
HMRC indicate a business could be adversely affected by COVID-19 if for example
• you’re unable to work because you:
• are shielding
• are self-isolating
• are on sick leave because of coronavirus
• have caring responsibilities because of coronavirus
• you’ve had to scale down or temporarily stop trading because:
• your supply chain has been interrupted
• you have fewer or no customers or clients
• your staff are unable to come in to work
You can apply if you’re a self-employed individual or a member of a partnership and you:
have submitted your Income Tax Self Assessment tax return for the tax year 2018-19
traded in the tax year 2019-20
are trading when you apply, or would be except for COVID-19
intend to continue to trade in the tax year 2020-21
have lost trading/partnership trading profits due to COVID-19
Your self-employed trading profits must also be less than £50,000 and more than half of your income come from self-employment. This is determined by at least one of the following conditions being true:
having trading profits/partnership trading profits in 2018-19 of less than £50,000 and these profits constitute more than half of your total taxable income
having average trading profits in 2016-17, 2017-18, and 2018-19 of less than £50,000 and these profits constitute more than half of your average taxable income in the same period
If you started trading between 2016-19, HMRC will only use those years for which you filed a Self-Assessment tax return.
If you have not submitted your Income Tax Self-Assessment tax return for the tax year 2018-19, you must do this by 23 April 2020.
HMRC will use data on 2018-19 returns already submitted to identify those eligible and will risk assess any late returns filed before the 23 April 2020 deadline in the usual way.
Making a claim
Claims must be made by the taxpayer, agents are unfortunately unable to make a claim on their client’s behalf. If you have not already made your first claim you can do so here; https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/self-employment-support/enter-unique-taxpayer-reference
If you have any queries regarding the Self Employment Income Support Grant please do not hesitate to contact us.
Should you not be eligible for this you may be able to claim “Universal Credit”. Visit https://benefits-calculator.turn2us.org.uk/AboutYou to see if you can claim.