Who can claim?

To be eligible for the fourth grant you must be a self-employed individual or a member of a partnership.

To work out your eligibility HMRC will first look at your 2019 to 2020 Self-Assessment tax return. Your trading profits must be no more than £50,000 and at least equal to your non-trading income.

If you’re not eligible based on your 2019 to 2020 Self-Assessment tax return, they will then look at the tax years 2016 to 2017, 2017 to 2018, 2018 to 2019 and 2019 to 2020.

You must also have traded in both tax years:

  • 2019 to 2020 and submitted your tax return by 2 March 2021
  • 2020 to 2021

You must either:

  • be currently trading but are impacted by reduced demand due to coronavirus
  • have been trading but are temporarily unable to do so due to coronavirus

You must also declare that:

  • you intend to continue to trade
  • you reasonably believe there will be a significant reduction in your trading profits due to reduced business activity, capacity, demand, or inability to trade due to coronavirus

How to claim:

If you are eligible, HMRC will contact you between 8th March and mid-April to give you your personal claim date. This will be the date that you can make your claim from. The letter will notify you that you will receive a phone call form HMRC within 10 days.

On the call, HMRC will ask you to confirm, your email address and agree to receive a link to a secure DropBox – You will then have two days to upload one form of identity and three months’ worth of Bank statements to demonstrate your business activity, before the link will expire.

HMRC has confirmed it will make three attempts to phone, therefore taxpayers who receive the letter should check that HMRC holds the correct telephone number for them. If the number needs to be updated, you must contact 0800 024 1222 (this line is for updating telephone numbers only and will not be able to deal with any other queries).

If HMRC is unsuccessful in reaching the taxpayer, they will write a further letter.

Taxpayers who receive the letter but do not complete the checks will be unable to claim a grant.

As with previous SEISS Claims, Tax Agents CANNOT claim on your behalf, HMRC are doing their best to make the process simple enough to be completed by you.

If the customer provided an agent’s number on their return, they will ask the agent to pass on the customer’s number as we need to speak to the customer directly.

HMRC are aware of increased scam activity related to HMRC’s coronavirus support schemes. The purpose of this letter is to explain to customers that this is a genuine call, and to give customers details on how to recognise it as such.

You can preview a template of the letter HERE

Further support:

The UK government has also announced that there will be a fifth and final grant covering May to September.

You will be able to claim from late July if you are eligible for the fifth grant.

The amount of the fifth grant will be determined by how much your turnover has been reduced in the year April 2020 to April 2021.

The fifth grant will be worth:

  • 80% of 3 months’ average trading profits, capped at £7,500, for those with a turnover reduction of 30% or more
  • 30% of 3 months’ average trading profits, capped at £2,850, for those with a turnover reduction of less than 30%

Further details will be provided on the fifth grant in due course.