Hello, hello…
Apologies for the lateness of today’s email… I had one or
two other things crop up this morning!
A couple of them were even non-Coronavirus related; a
reminder that other life is still going on.
Okay, there are a couple things that I need to report to you
today. Perhaps a little bit obscure but nevertheless important.
Let’s start with Statutory Sick Pay…
Statutory Sick Pay
There has been a temporary change to Statutory Sick Pay
(SSP)… at least in relation to Coronavirus.
In the good old days before Coronavirus (i.e. before 13th
March 2020) SSP used to kick after four days off sick and was claimed by an
employer via their National insurance contributions.
There’s been an awful lot more sickness… or if not sickness
per se then self-isolation and shielding so the government made a temporary
change to the SSP rules.
Although there’s a bit more to it the essentials are
these. SSP can be claimed from the first day of sickness and for up to
two weeks will be covered. But! The sickness must be Coronavirus
related. Specifically:
·
The employee needs to have or have had
Coronavirus symptoms
·
Or be self isolating because someone they live
with has symptoms
·
Or they have been shielding – with a letter from
their GP or the NHS to confirm
Because HMRC is anticipating a lot of claims they’ve built –
or more accurately are still building – a new portal. It’s almost ready
and we’ll be making claims soon… latest info is that the new online portal will
be ready by 26th May.
In the meantime if you want to read more about SSP (and who
wouldn’t?) you can read it here:
If you have an SSP claim to make we’ll be out to you soon
with details of how it’s going to work.
Self Employed Coronavirus Income Protection Scheme
It has to be said that mostly the claims process has been
very smooth.
However, we’re getting a few questions about how HMRC are
calculating the grant amount. Unfortunately, if you were self employed
for only part of a year HMRC is averaging profits across that whole year which
has an impact on the grant amount… let me show you how that works:
Let’s say you made £25,000 profit in the tax year 2018/19
but became self employed in February 2018 – so you had £5,000 profit for that
period.
Logically you might think that you’d been self employed for
fourteen months (two months in 17/18 and twelve months in 18/19) so that would
be the period HMRC would average your profit over. In this case it would
be: £30,000/14 = £2,142.86 average monthly profits.
But what actually happens is this…
HMRC takes your total profit from self employment over the
period you’ve been self employed and simply divides by the number of years… so
same scenario as above: £30,000/24 = £1,250 average monthly profit.
The difference in grant is a fair amount.
There is an appeals process with HMRC for both the amounts
and whether someone is eligible at all. As yet we’ve no feedback on
whether appeals are being entertained or whether HMRC’s attitude is simply
‘them’s the rules’.
We’ll keep you posted on that one.
Bounce Back Loans
Just a real quickie on this one to finish today’s email.
After initially getting some very positive reports in terms
of the speed loans were being processed and money was coming through there now
seem to be a few delays.
I think this is because in the first few days people were
thinking about the loans and not wanting to take on extra borrowing… however,
now that lockdown has extended reality is striking home and more people are
deciding to take on the Bounce Back Loan.
So, if you are thinking about applying for a loan give
yourself a bit of time between applying and needing the money to come through.
Okay, that’s it for today – stay safe out there and
hopefully we can catch up soon… I was just listening to the news on the radio
(whilst writing this) and it seems as though the Scottish Government is going
to announce how the lockdown is going to be slowly eased on Thursday.
Rowena
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