The Self-Employed Income Support scheme will allow you to claim a taxable grant worth 80% of your trading profits up to a maximum of £2,500 a month. It will be available for 3 months, but may be extended.

The grant will be subject to Income Tax and National Insurance contributions but does not need to be repaid.

You can make a claim for Universal Credit; https://www.gov.uk/universal-credit while you wait for the grant. You should record the grant as part of your self-employment income, and it may affect the amount of Universal Credit you get. This will not affect Universal Credit claims for earlier periods.

If you receive the grant you can continue to work or take on other employment including voluntary work.

Who can claim…

You can claim if you’re a self-employed individual or a member of a partnership and you:

  • have submitted your Self Assessment tax return for the tax year 2018 to 2019
  • traded in the tax year 2019 to 2020
  • are trading when you apply, or would be except for coronavirus
  • intend to continue to trade in the tax year 2020 to 2021
  • have lost trading profits due to coronavirus

You will need to confirm to HMRC that your business has been adversely affected by coronavirus. HMRC will as usual use a risk based approach to compliance.

Your trading profits must also be no more than £50,000 and more than half of your total income for either:

  • the tax year 2018 to 2019
  • the average of the tax years 2016 to 2017, 2017 to 2018, and 2018 to 2019

If you have not submitted Self Assessment tax returns for all 3 years, please see the GOV.UK website for how they will calculate your eligibility.

If you have not submitted your Self Assessment tax return for the tax year 2018 to 2019, you must do this by 23 April 2020 or you will NOT be able to claim. HMRC will review any late returns in the usual way.

HMRC will use data on the 2018 to 2019 tax returns already submitted to identify those eligible.

HMRC will not take into account any changes made to submitted returns after 26 March 2020, when working out your eligibility or amount of the grant.

For more information about the self-employed income support scheme contact GOV.UK; https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-a-grant-through-the-coronavirus-covid-19-self-employment-income-support-scheme#lessyears