Final Self-Employment Income Support Scheme Grant

September 23, 2021

The government intends to end its support of self-employed people through the use of the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) on the 30th of September 2021. The fifth and final grant will be open for claims in late July to cover the period of May 2021 to September 2021 for those who have suffered a sizeable loss in trading profits. In order to qualify for this grant, the recipient must have average trading profits of £50,000 or less with non-trading income not exceeding 50% of their total income. All claims for the SEISS grant must be made on or before the 30th of September 2021.

For those whose turnover has fallen by at least 30%, the full 80% grant will be available with a maximum claim of £7,500, and for those whose turnover has fallen by less than 30%, the 30% grant will be available with a maximum claim of £2,850. This differs from previous SEISS grants since it offers multiple tiers of qualification.

The majority of applicants who claim the fifth SEISS grant will need to present turnover figures in order to complete their claim. This is to compare turnovers between a ‘pandemic year’ and a normal ‘reference period’ in order to ascertain whether the applicant is able to get the 80% capped grant or the 30% capped grant.

Applicants who have only recently become self-employed will also be able to apply for the fifth SEISS grant even though they have been excluded from previous grants due to them commencing their trade during the 2019-20 tax year. This is reliant upon them having submitted their tax return for the 2019-20 tax year before midnight on the 2nd of March 2021 and they must also have traded or intended to trade within 2020-2021 and intend to continue trading within this period.

HMRC have also put out a warning to taxpayers to be aware of SEISS-related scams and to make sure that they only respond to correspondence that is verifiably from HMRC.

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