It's been a hard year to be in business. Staff being cut, a lack of work, companies collapsing. The government have stepped up and helped during the pandemic. Whilst this hasn't helped everyone, there is an extension to the self employment support scheme. Let's have a look at what this means for the self employed.
SEISS Extension
The SEISS will be extended like the furlough scheme has been. With a second lockdown just ended, this is important support for many families around the UK. There has been no self employment support for September and October however the third SEISS payment will cover November, January and February. With a fourth payment potentially set for after that. Whilst the first self employment support payment was 80% of your monthly income based on your previous tax returns, the second dropped to 70%. The third was going to be 20%, but there was uproar. The government raised it to 40%. They have now raised November to 80%, leaving January and February at 40%. This means 55% overall for the third SEISS payment. There is no parity between the self employment scheme and the furlough scheme but at least some support is there.
Will You Get Self Employment Support?
If you were entitled to the first SEISS payments, you'll be entitled to the third and fourth. There are no plans to include or bring anyone else into the scheme. Meaning that those who weren't eligible previously, are still unable to get that monetary support. It's certainly not ideal to be excluded but it looks like there will continue to be no government support for those people. For those excluded the only real options are Universal Credit or the Bounce Back Loan Scheme.
It's also worth noting that the suspension 'minimum income floor' for universal credit will now be extended until the end of April 2021. This means that many self employed people won't face a massive drop.
Keep working hard, get the monetary self employment support that you can and are entitled to and don't let the lack of support get you down. If you need any bookkeeping advice at this time, please do get in touch.