Tassib Hussain of Keystone Chartered Accountants SEISS Guide

About Tassib Hussain, Keystone Chartered Accountants

Tassib Hussain is a partner at Keystone Chartered Accountants that helps self-employed and small businesses through tax, VAT and business advisory services. He has been with the firm for over 8 years.

He joins us today to help guide you through the fourth SEISS grant which is available from late April.

What is SEISS?

The SEISS (Self Employed Income Support Scheme) is a scheme by the UK Government to help people who are self-employed or in a partnership who are affected by the Coronavirus.

There are 4 grants to date with the current grant covering the 1st of February to the 30th of April 2021

Who can claim the fourth Grant?

To be eligible for the fourth, you must meet the following criteria:

Self Employed or in a partnership – This means that those who are trading through a limited company or a trust cannot claim the grant.

Tassib Hussain suggests if you are running a limited company you may want to apply for a bounce-back loan which does not have to be paid for up to a year. There are also a lot of other grants provided by local governments that offer grants based on the rateable value of your business.

Running financial scenarios to find out whether the loan is beneficial for your business. Keystone Chartered Accountants have helped numerous businesses run financial scenarios to help business owners understand whether the loan makes financial sense for them. For business advisory service, contact us.

To be eligible for the fourth, you must meet the following criteria:

• You must have traded in both tax years:
  • 2019 to 2020 and submitted your tax return on or before 2 March 2021
  • 2020 to 2021
• Must have been **significantly** be affected by the coronavirus in one of two ways:
• Experienced reduced demand due to the pandemic

• Tassib says taxi drivers who have experienced reduced demand for taxis as a result of fewer people going out due to national lockdown would fall under this category.
• You can trade but temporarily cannot do so because of the virus (lockdowns)

How much money would I get?

For the SEISS grant, you can expect to get 80% of the previous 3 months trading profits.

To work this out simply take the average of the previous 4 years trading profit and follow the example below.

For example, let’s say your trading profit was £35,000 over the last 4 years. Dividing this by 12 will give us the average monthly trading profit. Which in our example is £2,916.66 we will multiply this by 3 to give us the profit for the 3 months. This is £8,750.

Once we have the average monthly trading profit for the 3 months we will multiply this by 0.8 to get the 80% figure. Which in our case is £7,000. This means that our total payout will be £7,000.

If our figure had been a little more than £7,000, say £8,500, the grant we would have received would be capped at £7,500.

How can I apply for the SEISS Grant?

To apply for the SEISS, you would need your self-assessment taxpayer unique reference number (UTR), national insurance number, Government Gateway ID and a UK bank account.

You will need to complete some checks to prove your identity.

Tassib Hussain says that this claim cannot be made by anyone other than yourself or it will cause a delay in receiving your payment.

Once you have claimed it may take up to 1-3 weeks depending on the demand to receive the payment.