Government Help for the Self-Employed
by Computare on 03/27/20
At last the Government has declared how the self-employed will be helped during this crisis. See our Covid-19 page for our latest understanding of the situation.
In a nutshell you will receive a taxable grant equal to 80% of the average taxable profit of your last three tax returns. The years are 2016/17, 2017/18, and 2018/19. For those of you fully up to date we hope that this will be a fairly routine exercise and that we can offer this service through the HMRC online portal. It's still unclear what the process will be but we are monitoring the situation closely. We will keep our charges to a minimum but we need to cover costs.
Unfortunately if you are behind in submitting your tax returns then it is going to be a much more complex and expensive process. At this uncertain time we will need to be paid in advance before we undertake any work relating to previous tax years. The only alternative to this is in the case of an expected tax refund that could be paid directly into our client account. There is still time to qualify but the closing date is 26th April 2020.
Obviously there will be newly self-employed without three year's records. We understand that there is still help but that it will be based upon actual earnings within the 2019/20 tax year. It is unclear how this process will work.
If you are still concerned about your own circumstances please read our Covid-19 page and the recommended links. If you can not find an answer then do please send an email to the person who normally processes your accounts.
