Dear customer,
The fifth Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) grant is different from the previous SEISS grants. If you think you may claim the fifth grant, this email will tell you what you need to do now, to get ready to make your claim from late July 2021.
If we think you’re eligible, we’ll contact you from mid-July to give you a personal claim date. Eligible customers can apply anytime from their personal claim date until 30 September 2021. The online claims service will open from late July.
What you should prepare now
The amount of the fifth grant will be determined by how much your turnover has been reduced in the year 2020-21 compared to before the pandemic.
Turnover includes the takings, fees, sales or money earned or received by your business.
If you choose to make a claim, you will need your turnover figures for:
- a pre-covid year, that represents normal trading. This should be 2019-20 or 2018-19
- your 2020-21 trading year.
If you claim, you must make the claim yourself, although you can ask a friend, family member, accountant or tax agent to help you. Please don’t allow anyone to make a claim on your behalf – including your accountant or tax agent – as this could lead to delays in your payment.
How to find your 2019-20 (or 2018-19) turnover
In the majority of instances, your turnover figure is on your tax return. To find your tax return, you can:
- log in to your online personal tax account (search ‘sign in or register’ on GOV.UK)
- check your business records
- ask your tax agent, if you have one
- ask HMRC for a copy of your paper return.
Your turnover figure will be in a different box, depending on which tax return and supplementary pages you submitted:
|
Tax return or supplementary pages you need to look at |
Box with your turnover in |
|
|
SA103F: Self-employment (Full) supplementary pages of the SA100 tax return |
15 (in the ‘Business income’ section) |
|
|
SA103S: Self-employment (Short) supplementary pages of the SA100 tax return |
9 (in the ‘Business income’ section) |
|
|
SA800: Partnership tax return |
3.24 or 3.29 |
|
|
SA200: (Short) tax return |
3.6 |
If any of the below apply to you, you will need to take extra steps to tell us your turnover before the pandemic:
- If you have an accounting period shorter or longer than 12 months: you will need to work out what your 12-month turnover was.
- If you have more than one business as a sole trader (not trading in a partnership or limited company): your figure must include the total turnover from all of your businesses.
- If you are a member of a partnership and have no other businesses: you will need to use the partnership’s total turnover figure.
- If you have more than one business, including a partnership: for each partnership, you will need to include your percentage share of the partnership’s turnover. This will be the same as the percentage of profit you took from each partnership in this year. You must add this to the turnover from your other businesses.
For support when calculating turnover, you can check the full guidance by searching ‘SEISS’ on GOV.UK.
How to work out your 2020-21 turnover
You need to work out your turnover for a 12-month period, which can start on any day from 1 April 2020 to 6 April 2020.
Your figure should be as accurate as possible or an honest estimate.
How you calculate your turnover will depend on the records you keep. You may need to:
- refer to your 2020 to 2021 Self Assessment tax return, if you’ve completed it
- ask your accountant or tax adviser (if you have one)
- check the accounting software you use for your business
- go through your bookkeeping or spreadsheet records that cover your self-employment invoices and payments received
- check the bank account you use for your business to account for money coming in from customers.
Once you’ve found your figures, you should add them all together to work out your turnover for April 2020 to April 2021.
You should not include any coronavirus support payments you received (for example: previous SEISS grants; Eat Out to Help Out payments; local authority or devolved administration grants) in your turnover figure.
If any of the below apply to you, it may change the way you calculate your April 2020 to April 2021 turnover:
- If you have more than one business as a sole trader: your figure must include the total turnover from all of your businesses. This includes any new business you started between April 2020 and April 2021.
- If you’re a member of a partnership and have no other businesses: you’ll need to work out the partnership’s total turnover figure.
- If you have more than one business, including a partnership: for each partnership, you’ll need to include your percentage share of the partnership’s turnover. This will be the same as the percentage of profit you took from each partnership in the 2019-20 (or 2018-19) year you are using for comparison, even if your profit share percentage changed in 2020-21. You should add this to the turnover from your other businesses.
- If your partnership started between April 2020 to April 2021: you need to work out your share of the turnover slightly differently. It should be the same percentage of profit you took from the partnership in April 2020 to April 2021.
- If you have Lloyd’s (underwriter) income: if you have Lloyd’s income as well as income from another business, you should use the turnover from your other business. We will not ask you for turnover figures if you only have Lloyd’s income.
You do not need to submit your 2020-21 Self Assessment tax return at this time, even though we are asking you for your 2020-21 turnover. The deadline for the 2020-21 Self Assessment tax return is 31 January 2022.
Reporting SEISS grants on your Self Assessment tax returns
SEISS grants are taxable. You need to report any grants you receive on the correct year’s return using the correct box. Grants should not be included in your turnover.
The first, second and third grants must be reported on your tax return for the year in which they were received – in the majority of cases, this will be the 2020-21 tax return to be submitted by 31 January 2022. If, exceptionally, you received your first, second or third SEISS grant payment on or after 6 April 2021, you will need to report this instead on your 2021-22 tax return.
The fourth and fifth grants should be included in your 2021-22 Self Assessment tax returns, which you cannot submit yet.
When reporting these grants, you should use the following boxes on your return:
|
Tax return or supplementary pages |
Box to report SEISS in |
|
|
SA103F: Self-employment (Full) supplementary pages of the SA100 tax return |
70.1 (page 2 of the ‘other tax adjustments’ section) |
|
|
SA103S: Self-employment (Short) supplementary pages of the SA100 tax return |
27.1 (in the ‘other tax adjustments’ section) |
|
|
SA104S: Partnership (Short) or SA104F: Partnership (full) supplementary pages of the SA800 tax return |
9.1 (page 2 of the ‘trading or professional profits’ section) |
|
|
SA200: (Short) tax return |
3.10A |
Further support
You can prepare to claim by viewing the full guidance or booking a webinar, just search ‘SEISS’ on GOV.UK.
A word on scams
We are urging customers to be careful if they are contacted out of the blue by someone asking for money or personal information. There are a lot of scams around where fraudsters are calling, texting or emailing customers claiming to be from HMRC. If in doubt, we advise you not to reply directly to anything suspicious, but to contact HMRC straight away – search GOV.UK for ‘HMRC scams’.
The National Cyber Security Centre has a helpful new guide on how to stay secure online and protect yourself or your business against cybercrime, which you can find by searching ‘Cyber Aware’.
I hope this information helps you and your business.
Yours faithfully
Jim Harra
Chief Executive and First Permanent Secretary – HMRC
