Self Employed Income Support and BPS

[essex man]

My accountant seems happy to call bps money either trading or other/unearned income.
If trading income you may find yourself paying both tax and national insurance on it if you are a sole trader/partnership.
Advantage in calling it unearned income in this regard.

No national insurance on unearned income

 

[Chasingmytail]

Just a thought

The reason why it should be a partnership (if you have one of course) Im quite surprised so many arnt not sure why accountants arent pushing this. Meaning you earn under the threshold for family allowance etc. All profits are shared so I am under £40k on drawings.

You need to ask a good agri accountancy firm to check your accounts and make sure all the money is allocated correctly. I doubt a small income off a mast is going to make a difference. Assuming your spending?

Are your VAT bills being done and allocated corrected by an accountant at the end of the year? Ive seen so many people not putting farm items through the business and all sorts of incorrect allocations? Just a thought but best get professional advice I can usually email my contact and get a reply within a few hours.

 

[Chopsy Varmint]

I received a letter.....pretty sure I don't qualify in any way as not really financially affected by the virus...only the weather(!!).

Decided to take a look on the website anyway. Bit of a queue but 5 mins and I was let in.

Filled in my UTR and NI no. and was met with a page telling me I'm eligible, and can claim from 16th May.

"Eligible" just means that I'm genuinely on their books as self employed I assume, rather than I'd have a valid claim.

Seems a funny system to log on....just to be told to come back in a few days time.

Yes, eligibility is not entitlement.

According to the Gov.co.uk site, to be eligible you only have to meet a few basic requirements:

• you traded in the tax year 2018 to 2019 and submitted your Self Assessment tax return on or before 23 April 2020 for that year
• trading profits no more than £50,000
• you traded in the tax year 2019 to 2020
• you intend to continue to trade in the tax year 2020 to 2021

To be entitled your business income has to have been adversely affected by cv19, either because you are having to self-isolate or are caring for someone who is, or because you’ve had to scale down or temporarily stop trading due to broken supply chain, fewer customers, staff unable to work.

I was advised that if I made a claim I should be prepared to present evidence to show my business suffered in March, April and May.

Seems quite straightforward but no doubt, as with all things Covid, there will be people thinking the rules don't apply to them.

 

[Greythundercloudys]

That's me claimed it for what it's worth, better than nothing. Not hard to do if you have the Wright numbers. 6 day wait. Now for that cheap loan.

 

[Bones]

Precisely my thoughts...too many people will try to claim that haven't been substantially effected
And then wonder why there are tax increases

Going to be very hard to catch the fraudsters, all people have to say is self isolating, couldn't sell lambs, maybe couldn't lamb sheep and suffered a lot of losses, people will find away, especially people who pay a lot of tax and trying to get some back.