The government has announced yesterday (4th May) that self employed people (including partners in a partnership) can apply from the 13th May 2020 for their Self Employment Grant.

Please note that the claim for the above grant can only be submitted to HMRC from your own personal Government Gateway. As agents, this is not something we have access to so you will need to make sure you have the User ID and password in place prior to the above date.

I suggest that you check whether you are eligible for the grant directly with HMRC – see here. It only takes a minute or so as long as you have your Unique Tax Reference (UTR) and National Insurance number.

Once you have checked that you are eligible, please continue and confirm your contact details by logging in to your Government Gateway.

If you don’t have a Government Gateway account – now is the time to create one. It takes less than five minutes as long as you have the relevant documents (such as your passport) to hand. – We have put together a simple screenshot guide on how to create one, you can see it here.

If you have any questions or encounter any difficulties with the above, please let us know whether we can help. Give us a call on 01425 470 044 or use the contact form near the bottom of this page.

Lastly as a reminder, you can apply if you are a self-employed individual or a member of a partnership and you:

• 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 taxable income must come from self-employment.
• Like all grants, this money will be included in your next self assessment tax return as part of your taxable income.

We are pleased to see that HMRC is ahead of schedule delivering the above grant which was originally planned to be in place in June 2020.