Government support for those working as self-employed genealogists

This is just a quick note to summarise what the London based government is planning to do for those working as genealogists, in terms of financial support, during the current coronavirus crisis. You will find the full measures listed at https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus/business-support.

The UK Government's Business Support page has three categories:

• Loans, tax relief and cash grants will be available
• Employers can apply for staff to get up to 80% pay if they can’t work
• Self-employed people will receive up to £2,500 per month in grants for at least 3 months

The last of these will be the category that many self-employed professional genealogists like myself will fall into, and there is a dedicated page on this at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-a-grant-through-the-coronavirus-covid-19-self-employment-income-support-scheme.

Support is envisaged by means of grants from June onwards, based on qualification as identified by HMRC through previousoly supplied tax returns. Here is the blurb:

You can apply if you’re a self-employed individual or a member of a partnership and you:

• have submitted your Income Tax Self Assessment tax return for the tax year 2018-19
• traded in the tax year 2019-20
• are trading when you apply, or would be except for COVID-19
• intend to continue to trade in the tax year 2020-21
• have lost trading/partnership trading profits due to COVID-19

Your self-employed trading profits must also be less than £50,000 and more than half of your income come from self-employment. This is determined by at least one of the following conditions being true:

• having trading profits/partnership trading profits in 2018-19 of less than £50,000 and these profits constitute more than half of your total taxable income
• having average trading profits in 2016-17, 2017-18, and 2018-19 of less than £50,000 and these profits constitute more than half of your average taxable income in the same period

If you started trading between 2016-19, HMRC will only use those years for which you filed a Self-Assessment tax return.

Key bit - if you have not submitted your Income Tax Self-Assessment tax return for the tax year 2018-19, you must do this by 23 April 2020.

HMRC will use data on 2018-19 returns already submitted to identify those eligible and will risk assess any late returns filed before the 23 April 2020 deadline in the usual way.


Comment: I'm a little unclear as to whether I personally qualify, for whilst the majority of my income has been through self-employment over the three years noted, this was not the case in 2018-2019, in which I also worked for 9 months of that year as a parliamentary caseworker. Income from this post was more than 50% of my total income for that tax year, but I am unsure as to whether the payment is based on this primarily as the qualifying year, or on the average over the three years identified. There is nothing I can do to explore this further for now, however, as the plan is that HMRC will contact those it believes qualify.

Here's the amount you will get if you qualify:

You’ll get a taxable grant which will be 80% of the average profits from the tax years (where applicable):

• 2016 to 2017
• 2017 to 2018
• 2018 to 2019

To work out the average HMRC will add together the total trading profit for the 3 tax years (where applicable) then divide by 3 (where applicable), and use this to calculate a monthly amount.

It will be up to a maximum of £2,500 per month for 3 months. The amount will be paid directly into your bank account, in one instalment.

Good luck!

Chris

You can pre-order my new book, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 (out April). Also available, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.