The latest measures to assist self-employed and freelance workers announced.
Today, Thursday 26th March, the Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced the long awaited for assistance for self-employed and freelance workers.
It is called the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme and it looks like this:
- Available to those who are already self-employed and have a self-assessment tax return for 2019
- 80% of profits up to £2,500 a month calculated using average monthly profits over the last three financial years (if you have only been running for 1 or 2 years the payment will be based on this)
- The grant will be capped at those with taxable profits of up to £50,000 who make a majority of their income from self-employment
- Will initially last for 3 months, then reviewed
- The money will be available no later than the beginning of June
- HMRC will contact those eligible directly in the coming weeks
- If you missed filing deadline in January, you will have 4 weeks from today to file
- As with the Job Retention Scheme it will be backdated until March 1st
- This is a taxable grant
As always with these press conferences this is an initial outline, there will of course me more specific questions and answers in the coming days. We will be keeping this page updated whenever more information is made available.