New Support for Self Employed Workers Announced

In his latest announcement this afternoon, the Chancellor Rishi Sunak has outlined details of the government rescue package for self-employed individuals.

The key elements announced today include:

• a new self-employed income support scheme will pay self-employed people a taxable grant worth 80% of average monthly income, capped at £2,500pm
   
• income will be calculated by taking the average of income over the last three years
   
• self-employed people can claim these grants and continue to do business (so it’s not the same as furlough leave, where employees have to remain at home)
   
• the scheme is only open to anyone with trading profits of up to £50k (this covers 95% of self-employed people).  Self-employed people who earn more will not qualify.
   
• the scheme is only open to those who make the majority of income from self-employment; if you are employed but have a ‘side job’ which is self-employed, you will not be eligible
   
• the scheme is only those who have submitted a tax return for 2019 (this is to minimise fraud).  However, those who did not submit their tax return by the due date of 31 January 2020, and have not yet submitted one, can still submit a tax return for 2019 for a further four weeks from today
   
• there are no steps to take.  HMRC will contact eligible self-employed people directly and pay the grant straight into their bank account after inviting them to fill out an online form
   
• the self-employed income support scheme will be open to people across UK for at least 3 months.  However, the scheme is unlikely to be up and running before the end of June, so it will not help with immediate cash flow issues.

What was announced today was the key elements of the scheme but the full details of how the scheme will work are not yet available. Once more information becomes available we will share it.