Unfortunately Accountants and Bookkeepers are not allowed to apply for this grant on your behalf, so here is a little assistance taken from the www.gov.uk website, which will hopefully give a little insight whether you are eligible.
To be eligible for the fourth grant you must be a self-employed individual or a member of a partnership. You cannot claim the grant if you trade through a limited company or a trust.
You must have traded in both tax years:
You must either:
You must also declare that you:
In order to claim the fourth grant, you must reasonably believe that you’ll suffer a significant reduction in trading profits, due to reduced business activity, capacity, demand or inability to trade due to coronavirus between 1 February 2021 and 30 April 2021. You must keep evidence that shows how your business has been impacted by coronavirus resulting in less business activity than otherwise expected.
HMRC expects you to make an honest assessment about whether you reasonably believe your business will have a significant reduction in profits.
Before you make a claim, you must decide if the impact on your business between 1 February 2021 and 30 April 2021 will cause a significant reduction in your trading profits for the tax year you report them in.
HMRC cannot make this decision for you because your individual and wider business circumstances will need to be considered when deciding whether the reduction is significant.
You should wait until you have a reasonable belief that your trading profits are going to be significantly reduced, before you make your claim.
You do not have to consider any other coronavirus scheme support payments that you have received when deciding if you’ve had a significant reduction in your trading profits.
To work out your eligibility for the fourth grant we’ll 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 or more than your non-trading income.
If you’re not eligible based on your 2019 to 2020 Self Assessment tax return, we’ll then look at the tax years 2016 to 2017, 2017 to 2018, 2018 to 2019 and
2019 to 2020.
The fourth grant is calculated at 80% of 3 months’ average trading profits. It will be paid out in a single instalment and capped at £7,500 in total. How much you receive will depend on your average trading profits.
We’ll work out your average trading profits using up to 4 years’ of submitted tax returns. This may affect the amount you’ll get which could be higher or lower than your previous grants.
We’ll take into account trading profits from the 2016 to 2017, 2017 to 2018, 2018 to 2019 and 2019 to 2020 tax years. If you have a gap in the years you have traded, we’ll only use your most recent returns after the gap to work out the grant.
This is an example of how we’ll work out how much grant you’ll get if your average trading profits were £42,000 over the last 4 tax years.
The grant is subject to Income Tax and self-employed National Insurance Contributions. It must be reported on your 2021 to 2022 Self Assessment tax return.
The grant also counts towards your annual allowance for pension contributions.
You must make the claim yourself. You must not ask a tax agent or adviser to claim on your behalf as this will trigger a fraud alert, which will delay your payment.
HMRC will check claims. We’ll take appropriate action to withhold or recover payments for claims found to be dishonest or inaccurate. If you know you’re not eligible for the grant and do not tell us, you may also have to pay a penalty.
How to claim SEISS 4. The online service for the fourth grant will be available from late April 2021. HMRC will contact you in mid-April to give you a date that you can make your claim from.
Please keep your Claim References! I will need these when I do your Self Assessment Tax Return.
Lorna
