The Fifth SEISS grant is coming…

HMRC have announced that the fifth grant window for the Self Employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS) will open in late July. More detailed guidance will be published in late June.

To be eligible for the grant, an individual must be self-employed or a member of a partnership. They must have traded in the tax year 2019/2020 and submitted their tax return on or before the 2nd March 2021, and also have traded in the tax year 2020/21.

There will be a ‘turnover test’ which will determine whether individuals will receive a grant of 30% or 80%, as follows:

• If your turnover has reduced by 30% or more in the year April 2020 to April 2021, you’ll receive a grant worth 80% of three months’ average trading profits (capped at £7,500)
• If your turnover has reduced by less than 30% in the year April 2020 to April 2021, you’ll receive a lower grant, worth 30% of three months’ average trading profits (capped at £2,850).

As with the earlier grants, HMRC will contact the self employed to allocate a date on which they will be able to make their claim through the portal.

Anyone who was ineligible for the fourth grant will also be excluded from the fifth. This is because the fifth grant calculation is based on the same tax returns as the fourth.

Preparing your 2021 Tax Return

If you received any of the earlier SEISS grants in the year ended 5th April 2021, these will need to be included in your Tax Return for the same year. HMRC have produced guidance for correctly including these amounts, which can be found here. If we prepare your Return, as long as you include the amounts you received, we’ll take care of them for you so you don’t need to worry!

If we need to speak to HMRC…

The existing authorisations that we have in place that enable HMRC to speak to us regarding your personal tax affairs do NOT apply to SEISS grants.  If we need to speak to them about your grants before they are included in a submitted tax return, we may need to ask you to give us an additional authority. We appreciate this isn’t ideal, but sadly, it’s how HMRC have decided to structure things! If this arises, we’ll discuss the requirement in more detail at that point.

Once the figures have been entered into a submitted Return, HMRC are then able to talk to us about them, as they have an authority to talk about any submitted returns.

It’s bizarre, I know, but true!

If you’d like to talk to us about the SEISS grants, whether previous ones you may have received, or the fifth iteration, please get in touch. We’re here to help!