As detailed in our previous blog “Self-employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) Extension”, the SEISS grant was extended so that it provides grants for two further consecutive three-month periods, running into 2021, as follows: -
November 2020 to January 2021
You can claim up to 80% of three months of your average profits, capped at £7,500.
You can apply for this as of 30 November 2020.
February 2021 to April 2021
The government will announce the value of this grant at a later date
Eligible self-employed people can claim grants for one or both of these trading periods, if their average trading profit has been impacted by coronavirus.
Who is eligible
To make a claim for the third grant, taxpayers must meet a number of conditions, and make an honest assessment about whether they reasonably believe their trading profits will be significantly reduced due to coronavirus.
As previously, the third grant will be subject to Income Tax and self-employed National Insurance.
To make a claim for the third grant, taxpayers must – as previously:
- be self-employed or a member of a partnership – they cannot claim the grant if they trade through a limited company or a trust;
- have traded in both the tax years 2018 to 2019 and 2019 to 2020.
For this third SEISS grant taxpayers must also now:
- either be currently trading but are impacted by reduced business activity, capacity or demand, or have been previously trading but are temporarily unable to do so due to coronavirus
- declare that they intend to continue to trade, or restart trading, and that they reasonably believe that the impact on their business will cause a significant reduction in their trading profits
- only claim if the reduction in profits is caused by reduced business activity, capacity or demand, or inability to trade due to coronavirus – reduction in profits due to increased costs (such as having to buy masks) does not make a business eligible for the third SEISS grant.