HMRC
HMRC

Second Self Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) now open

HMRC has recently contacted self-employed people who may be eligible for the second taxable grant under SEISS if their trading profits have been adversely affected by Coronavirus. The scheme is now open for claims, and customers have been given a date to make a claim. They can claim any time between their allocated date and 19 October 2020.

The eligibility criteria for the second grant are exactly the same as the first grant – so self-employed people who were eligible for the first SEISS grant will be eligible for the second grant, so long as their business has been adversely affected since 14 July 2020. This typically means that their business has experienced lower income and / or higher costs because of coronavirus since 14 July. There is no minimum threshold over which a business’s income, costs or activity need to have changed by, but they will be asked to keep appropriate records as evidence of how their business has been adversely affected.

The second taxable grant is worth 70% of average monthly trading profits, a reduction from the 80% available under the first grant. This will be paid out in a single instalment and will be based on three months’ worth of trading profits and capped at a maximum of £6,570.

Eligible parents

Self-employed parents whose income in 2018-19 (and their tax records) may have been affected if they took time out to have children will also now be able to claim if they meet the eligibility criteria. There’s more information for new parents, including an online form on GOV.UK

Getting help

There is guidance on SEISS available on GOV.UK and there are also webinars and a short explainer video on HMRC’s YouTube channel.

Agents and accountants have an important role in helping their clients understand their eligibility and level of entitlement, and HMRC appreciates their support. However, they cannot make a claim on behalf of their clients. This is because it will trigger an alert which leads to delays in payment reaching people.

Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme: what you need to do from 1 September

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) is changing from 1 September:

  • CJRS will pay 70% of usual wages up to a cap of £2,187.50 per month for the hours furloughed employees do not work.
  • Employers in your constituency will still need to pay their furloughed employees at least 80% of their usual wages for the hours they do not work, up to a cap of £2,500 per month. Employers in your constituency will need to fund the difference between this and the CJRS grant themselves.
  • The caps are proportional to the hours not worked. For example, if the employee is furloughed for half their usual hours in September, the employer is entitled to claim 70% of their usual wages for the hours they do not work up to £1,093.75 (50% of the £2,187.50 cap).

Employers in your constituency will continue to have to pay furloughed employees’ National Insurance (NI) and pension contributions from their own funds.

Further guidance and live webinars offering more support on changes to the scheme and how they impact employers are available to book online.

Finding previous CJRS guidance

We’ve recently updated CJRS guidance to make it easier for employers in your constituency to find the most relevant, up-to-date information.

If employers in your constituency need to check older guidance – for example information for their claims ending on or before 30 June, a link to previous guidance can be found in boxes at the top of these pages:

Update on the implementation of the loan charge 

HMRC has published further details on how it will implement the loan charge to support customers.

HMRC has published a guide to how it will implement the loan charge. For those worried about their ability to pay the loan charge, HMRC has set out how its debt management processes work, including detailed examples of how the department agrees time to pay arrangements.

Some customers need to act now to conclude settlement of tax due on disguised remuneration schemes so that they do not have to pay the loan charge.

Customers who are not settling, and therefore become liable to pay the loan charge, will need to pay the charge that is due on 30 September or agree a Time to Pay arrangement with HMRC before then.

Tax Free Childcare

With Scottish schools returning last week, and Northern Irish schools re-opening from tomorrow, we are reminding parents in those areas to get up to £2,000 of government help towards childcare costs with Tax-Free Childcare (TFC). For every £8 that families pay, the government will add £2, up to a maximum of £2,000 per child, per year (or £4,000 for disabled children).

Support is available to working parents and to the self-employed, for children aged 0–11. The money can go towards a whole range of regulated childcare including nurseries, childminders, before and after-school clubs and holiday clubs.

You can find out more and apply through the Childcare Choices website. Parents can also use the Childcare Choices website to see what childcare offers they could be eligible for. The website includes a Childcare Calculator so that they can compare all of the government’s childcare offers.

Child Benefit: Full Time Non-Advanced Education

For children aged over 16 who are staying on in full-time non-advanced education from September, such as Sixth Form colleges, or training, HMRC is urging parents to inform us so that Child Benefit payments and Child Tax Credit payments don’t stop. Child Benefit provides £21.05 a week for the eldest or only child in a family and £13.95 a week for each additional child, up to the age of 19 for teens on approved courses or training.

Claimants can tell HMRC by using or creating an online Personal Tax Account or by returning the Full Time Non-Advanced Education form HMRC recently sent to eligible households.

Claimants with a child starting full-time non-advanced education will only continue to receive Child Benefit and Child Tax Credit if they tell HMRC before August 31. If they do not meet the deadline, payments will automatically stop after this date.

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