CORONAVIRUS SELF-EMPLOYMENT INCOME SUPPORT SCHEME (CSEISS) – UPDATE FOR CLIENTS

by Rob Stokes

Published on 27th March 2020

HELP FOR THE SELF EMPLOYED

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced measures to support the self-employed and partnerships.

The scheme is called the Coronavirus Self-employment Income Support Scheme (CSEISS).

If you have suffered a loss in income, a taxable grant will be paid to the self-employed or partnerships, worth 80% of profits up to a cap of £2,500 per month. The current assumption is that this will include partners in LLP’s as well. The government believes that 95% of the self-employed population will be eligible.

Initially, this will be available for three months in one lump-sum payment and will start to be paid from the beginning of June.

You cannot apply for this scheme yet. HMRC will contact you if you are eligible for the scheme and invite you to apply online.

Government advice: Individuals do not need to contact HMRC now and doing so could delay the work being undertaken to introduce the scheme.

Who is eligible?

Self-employed individuals and a those who are a member of a partnership. In addition, those eligible must have more than half their income from being self-employed and:

• 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.

It may sound obvious, but a further requirement is that the individual remains self-employed to qualify.  So a question HMRC will ask when applying is are you still self-employed now? as the information they are using is already a year old at best.

There a few individuals who have not submitted their 2018-19 Self-Assessment tax return and to qualify they now have until the 23 April 2020 to do so.