Coronavirus: Guidance for self-employed people

Self-employed members won’t be able to apply for the scheme yet. HMRC will contact you directly and invite you to apply for the scheme online. The Government is urging people to not contact HMRC at this time as this will lead to delays in setting up the system.

The following sets out further information on the scheme which will be of interest to members:

Who can apply

You can apply if you’re 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 income comes from self-employment. This is determined by at least one of the following conditions being true:

• having trading profits/partnership trading profits in 2018-19 of less than £50,000 and these profits constitute more than half of your total taxable income
• having average trading profits in 2016-17, 2017-18, and 2018-19 of less than £50,000 and these profits constitute more than half of your average taxable income in the same period

If you started trading between 2016-19, HMRC will only use those years for which you filed a Self-Assessment tax return.

If you have not submitted your Income Tax Self-Assessment tax return for the tax year 2018-19, you must do this by 23 April 2020.

HMRC will use data on 2018-19 returns already submitted to identify those eligible and will risk assess any late returns filed before the 23 April 2020 deadline in the usual way.

More information about this, how much people are entitled to and how it will be worked out can be found at this page.

The Government has also released further information on:

•  Deferral of Self-Assessment income tax payments due in July 2020 and VAT payments due from 20 March 2020 until 30 June 2020. Please find a link for further information on this here. 
• Increased amounts of Universal Credit. Please find a link for further information here. This will be of interest to many of your members who may be distressed that they are unable to receive money from the self-employed scheme until June 2020 at the earliest.