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Domestic Reverse Charge: New 5% disregard rule and other invoicing quirks

There are times when you need to understand what a tax rule means, although it will rarely be relevant in your day-to-day work. This is to ensure you can give a straight answer to a question asked by a client with reassuring words such as: “That’s OK, you don’t need to worry about that.”

One such issue is the new 5% disregard rule, which will be part of the new domestic reverse charge legislation for builders that will come into effect on 1 March 2021.

Example 1

Patsy the plumber has untaken two jobs for Contractor Ltd and has raised her sales invoice on 1 April 2021. Contractor Ltd is registered for both the construction industry scheme (CIS) and VAT. The sales invoice itemises the two jobs:

  • work carried out in a hotel bathroom for Contractor’s client – Hotel Ltd: £500
  • work carried out fitting a new bathroom suite at Contractor’s head office: £8,000

How much VAT will Patsy charge on this invoice?

Mixed sales invoices

The starting point is that if an invoice includes both ‘reverse charge’ work (the hotel job) and ‘non-reverse charge’ work (the head office work, where Contractor Ltd is an end-user), the reverse charge will apply to all of the invoice, ie no VAT is charged by Patsy. The VAT of £1,700 (20% x £8,500) will be declared in Box 1 of the VAT return submitted by Contractor Ltd.

However, if the value of the ‘reverse charge’ work is 5% or less of the invoice total, then the normal VAT rules will apply to the invoice.

In this example, £500 is 5.9% of £8,500 so the reverse charge will apply to all of the invoice. But if the hotel job had been £400, then Patsy would need to charge 20% VAT because the percentage of reverse charge work  would be 4.8% (£400 / £8,400). Her invoice will be for £8,400 + £1,680 VAT and she will be paid £10,080 by Contractor Ltd.

Work on new dwellings

Example 2

Clive is a subcontractor carpet fitter working on new houses, supplying both labour and materials. He has charged Contractor Ltd £250 for labour and £1,000 for the carpets on his April 2021 sales invoice. Contractor Ltd provides onward supplies to Developer Ltd, ie the work carried out by Clive comes within the reverse charge rules.

In this situation, the labour is zero-rated as building work on a new dwelling but the charge for the carpets is subject to 20% VAT because carpets are not building materials permanently fitted into a new dwelling. However, the key issue with the reverse charge rules is that the labour is zero-rated, so the invoice is subject to normal VAT rules.

Clive will charge £1,250 + £200 VAT and will be paid £1,450 by Contractor Ltd.

Single charge

What if Clive in example 2 did not split his labour and materials on his sales invoice, ie he made a single ‘supply and fit charge’ for £1,250?

In this situation, the labour is also standard rated but the HMRC guidance confirms that the reverse charge will not apply, ie Clive will charge £1,250 + £250 VAT (see reverse charge technical guidance para 16.)

Conclusion

There are other construction industry supplies when the reverse charge will not apply:

  • goods supplied on hire without labour
  • professional fees such as surveyors and architects and
  • employment businesses supplying staff.

This article has highlighted quirks which could affect some of your clients.

Domestic Reverse Charge: Verifying suppliers and customers

Advice on how to check whether your customers and supplies are genuine and have made the necessary registrations so you can apply the domestic reverse charge.

The new domestic reverse charge (DRC) rules for the construction industry are due to commence on 1 March 2021.

A common mistake will be that a builder selling services doesn’t charge VAT when he should do, or a buyer pays VAT to a supplier when the reverse charge should apply. HMRC has the power to correct such anomalies in both cases by raising an assessment, so there is a big incentive to get the VAT treatment right first time.

If a customer is incorrectly charged VAT by a builder when the reverse charge should apply, he must ask him for a VAT credit to correct the situation.

Supplier checks

A builder selling construction services must first be sure that his customer is both CIS and VAT registered.

A potential difficulty is when the customer is in the process of applying for a VAT number from HMRC. In this situation, you should consider the advice given in VAT Notice 7.35, para 9.3.2, which is to request a 20% advance deposit from the customer to cover the potential output tax liability if things go wrong.

The HMRC guidance advises: “Any deposit taken in these circumstances can be refunded when they can show evidence that they’ve got their VAT registration number.”

Customer checks

The challenge is to make sure that reasonable steps have been taken to check a customer is bona fide. A lot of this process comes down to common sense. If your client is doing business with a new customer, a due diligence process should have been carried out as part of the commercial decision to take on that customer.

HMRC has confirmed that a builder who has been deliberately misled by a customer but has taken reasonable steps to check their credibility will not be held responsible for underpaid output tax. The ‘reasonable steps’ issue is well-summarised by para 9.3.1 of VAT Notice 7.35.

Three points to remember

There are three priorities for those who are buying in building services from March onwards.

Incorrectly charged VAT

Make sure that you are not charged VAT by a builder when the reverse charge should apply. You can still claim input tax in Box 4 but HMRC has the power to assess output tax for the same amount, as if the reverse charge had been carried out correctly.

Nature of work

Check that the work comes within the scope of the CIS and that the supplier is providing building services, but is not an employment business which is only making a supply of staff rather than construction services. Supplies by an employment business are subject to normal VAT rules.

End user or intermediary supplier

The final check is for customers to advise their builders before work starts if they qualify as either an ‘end user’ or ‘intermediary supplier’ for any of the work in question.

Conclusion

As with many issues in tax, advance planning is the key to reducing the risk of errors. Training of relevant staff will be very important. The aim of the new rules is to reduce the incidence of VAT fraud in the construction industry – don’t play into the hands of the fraudsters by having weak checking procedures.

Finally, if you do get things wrong, HMRC has confirmed in section 5 of its detailed guidance that it will adopt a light touch as far as penalties are concerned for errors made in the first six months of the new legislation, ie until 31 August 2021, “as long as you are trying to comply with the new legislation and have acted in good faith.”

HMRC suspends late filing tax penalties until 28 February

HMRC have bowed to pressure from professional bodies and waived late filing penalties on tax returns as long as the taxpayer can file their return online by 28 February.

With days left before 31 January, HMRC’s chief executive Jim Harra effectively extended the tax return deadline after conceding that the tax department will not charge late filing penalties for late online tax returns submitted by 28 February.

Harra said this move will “give [taxpayers] the breathing space they need to complete and file their returns, without worrying about receiving a penalty”.

“We want to encourage as many people as possible to file their return on time, so we can calculate their tax bill and help them if they can’t pay it straight away. But we recognise the immense pressure that many people are facing in these unprecedented times and it has become increasingly clear that some people will not be able to file their return by 31 January,” said HMRC’s Harra.

HMRC’s late filing penalties backtrack arrived after more than 8.9m people filed their tax returns, leaving another 3m still to file. While the number is still high, it is on track with the number of tax returns left to file at the same time last year.

Although HMRC has progressively backed down on tax return late filing penalties over the past month, it is still pushing anyone who hasn’t filed yet to still do so by 31 January. The relaxation of late filing penalties does not affect the payment deadline, which means interest will be charged from 1 February on any outstanding liabilities if taxpayers don’t pay their bills by 31 January.

Nimesh Shah from Blick Rothenberg is still urging self employed individuals to file by 31 January as they “risk being excluded from future government support” and  “there could be other consequences in relation to their tax affairs”.

Last-minute reprieve

The tax department was previously standing firm on the self assessment deadline, and had rejected pleas from the professional bodies to either extend the deadline or waive late-filing penalties. Although HMRC insisted throughout that it was keeping the situation under review.

HMRC first rejected calls from the professional bodies in December, saying that their proposal to  waive late filing penalties for a short period after 31 January would “complicate” HMRC’s self assessment message and would “send a blanket signal that it is OK to file late”.

However, Harra did acknowledge that pandemic-related disruption from the taxpayer or the agent would be considered a reasonable excuse.

Furlough claims for annually paid directors

Many small company directors were locked out of CJRS-1 and CJRS-2 because they paid themselves an annual salary at the end of March 2020, missing the RTI cut-off date of 19 March.

If those directors managed to pay themselves some salary between 20 March and 30 October 2020 they are eligible to claim for furlough pay under CJRS-3. The problem is how to calculate the amount to claim based on one annual payment of salary, taking into account the monthly pay cap of £2,500.

New examples

On 14 January HMRC published two examples that outline for the first time how furlough claims should be calculated for annually paid directors (see examples 3.14 and 3.15).

Both examples indicate that HMRC expects furlough calculations to be based on day counts. Whilst that may strike you as the obvious way to calculate their furlough pay, there have been two other methodologies used:

  • take the annual amount paid and apply the monthly reference pay cap of £2,500; or
  • take the annual value and divide by 12 and apply the 80% rule (or lower percentage if applicable for the claim month)

Fixed rate employees

HMRC has taken the view that directors are ‘fixed rate’ employees, which is in itself interesting given they may have a varying pattern of payment depending upon personal needs. For example, creating an SMP entitlement can necessitate a different payment pattern than prior years or if the company’s year end changes.

The Treasury Direction also says at para 13.1 (f): “Basic hours worked in a salary period do not normally vary according to business, economical agricultural seasonal considerations”.

Being designated as a variable pay employee, if eligible for CJRS-1 and CJRS-2 could be beneficial if there was a different payment pattern in 2019/20, as the CJRS guidance says the business can decide if a variable pay approach is more appropriate.

Eligibility issues

There is a further problem with HMRC’s example 3.14, as the eligibility for CJRS-3 (HMRC refer to it as the CJRS extension) is not as cut and dried as the example indicates.

We are told the director received their annual salary payment in December 2019 so is eligible for furlough in April 2020 as an RTI return was made in 2019/20 before 20 March 2020. The director is then furloughed again in November 2020.

To be eligible for CJRS-3 the April 2020 furlough claim must be paid to the director as a salary, which is then reported in an RTI return made between 20 March and 30 October 2020. Only then will they be eligible to be included in a furlough claim in November 2020 under CJRS-3

If they have kept the funds received in April’s claim within the company until the next annual payment period (ie, December 2020), the director is not eligible to be furloughed in November 2020 under CJRS-3 as there will have been no qualifying RTI return for that director.

HMRC has acknowledged that this is not clear in the example 3.14 and have committed to amending it.

Change of pay pattern

If the director has moved onto monthly payments for tax year 2020/21, as many have sensibly done, then they will be eligible to be furloughed in November 2020. This will still be calculated as shown in example 3.14 if the director is to be treated as a fixed rate employee.

Domestic Reverse Charge: Sales invoices and VAT returns

Here are simple steps to getting invoices, credit notes and VAT returns right, when applying the domestic reverse charge in the construction industry.  

A challenge with the new domestic reverse charge rules being introduced into the construction industry on 1 March 2021 is not to over-complicate the accounting issues.

All that is happening is that VAT is not being charged by a supplier on a qualifying job subject to 5% or 20% VAT, and the customer includes the VAT in box 1 of their own return instead.

Example

Plumber Pete is doing work for Contractor Ltd which is subject to the new reverse charge rules. The value of the work is £10,000 plus 20% VAT.

Pete will invoice the company for £10,000 with no VAT, and record the sale as an output in box 6 of his next VAT return. If he uses the cash accounting scheme, the box 6 entry will be based on the payment date rather than invoice date.

Contractor Ltd will apply the reverse charge according to the invoice or payment date, whichever happens first (usually the invoice date), even if it uses the cash accounting scheme.

Invoice details

Pete must include two pieces of information on all the invoices that are subject to the reverse charge:

  • A note to confirm that his customer must deal with the VAT, along the lines of: “Reverse charge: Customer to pay the VAT to HMRC”
  • Either the amount of VAT that the customer will declare as the reverse charge (£2,000), or at least the rate of VAT for the work in question (20% in this case).

Some builders maybe planning to quote the legislation on their invoices, eg, “No VAT charged – s55A, VATA 1994 applies”. It maybe simpler to leave out this reference and include more practical wording as above. It also makes sense to include the customer’s VAT and CIS numbers on each invoice.

Multiple VAT rates

A suggestion is that the exact amount of VAT subject to the reverse charge should be included on sales invoices rather than just the rate that applies to the job, but either approach is fine.

If an invoice includes work that is subject to both 5% and 20% VAT, then showing the VAT rate applicable may be better. There is a good example of a mixed rate invoice in section 14 of HMRC’s reverse charge guidance.

Building materials

Don’t forget that the reverse charge also applies to materials supplied by a builder as part of his work.

If a builder supplies labour and materials, and does a lot of reverse charge work, it might be worth reverting to monthly VAT returns, to accelerate input tax claims on buying materials. But this would mean submitting 12 VAT returns rather than four VAT returns each year, a greater administrative burden.

Credit notes for reverse charge work

There are two ways of dealing with credit notes:

If both a supplier and customer are registered for VAT, and the customer has no input tax restrictions, the credit can be raised without the customer adjusting the VAT if both parties agree (see VAT Notice 700, para 18.2.1).

Alternatively, the credit note raised by the supplier can include a note to adjust the VAT; ie, reductions in the figures in boxes 1, 4 and 7 of the customer’s next VAT return in accordance with the principles of the reverse charge.

Final tips

Don’t forget that the new reverse charge rules do not apply in two important situations:

  • Zero-rated supplies – eg, work on new dwellings
  • Employment business – these businesses are supplying staff rather than construction services, so all of their sales are subject to normal VAT rules.

HMRC to run IR35 workshops for construction

HMRC has confirmed it will be running a series of interactive workshops for construction firms this month to help the sector prepare for the impending changes to the IR35 tax rules.

These govern the tax status of an individual working as a contractor or freelancer and whether, for taxation purposes, they ought to be deemed an employee on payroll.

HMRC is running four workshops later this month lasting 90 minutes each

Originally set to come into effect from April 2020, the implementation of IR35 legislation changes was postponed until 6 April this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The changes mean that medium and large businesses in the UK will be responsible for determining whether IR35 rules apply to those working for them as contractors, whereas previously the individual contractor was responsible for making this decision.

Now HMRC has confirmed it will be running a series of interactive workshops specifically for medium and large-sized businesses in the construction sector who may be affected by the changes to help them with their preparations.

These are taking place on 19, 20, 26 and 27 January and will run for up to an hour and a half.

The workshops have been designed to provide additional support and as a forum for firms to ask questions.

HMRC has said the companies joining the sessions should also use HMRC’s other resources and already have some knowledge of the forthcoming changes.

Domestic Reverse Charge: The final countdown for builders

Which builders will be affected by the new VAT domestic reverse charge (DRC) regime in the construction industry, which is due to come into effect on 1 March.

On 5 January a government spokesperson confirmed: “The government is committed to implementing the reverse charge on 1 March.” The previous start dates of 1 October 2019 and the 1 October in 2020 were rightly postponed by HMRC for various reasons. The countdown to 1 March 2021 has started.

Reverse charge

The reverse charge rules often cause confusion. In brief the customer accounts for output tax in box 1 of their VAT return, based on a VAT exclusive invoice received from a supplier. If the supplier does not charge VAT in the first place, and is not therefore paid VAT, he cannot pocket the VAT money and disappear without paying it to HMRC.

That is the intended outcome of the DRC regime: to reduce VAT fraud in the construction industry.

Builders selling services

In the case of builders supplying services, there are five key questions to ask. If the answer to the first four questions is ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to the final question, the reverse charge will apply and no VAT will be charged on sales invoices raised for the job in question, and the customer should account for VAT instead.

  1. Is the customer registered for the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS)?

If the answer to this question is ‘no’ the builder doesn’t need to worry about the reverse charge rules any further for this customer and can just adopt normal VAT accounting from 1 March – job done!

  1. Is the customer registered for VAT?

This can be confirmed using HMRC’s new VAT number checker service. It’s recommended it is used by builders as a matter of course.

The worst-case scenario is for a builder not to charge VAT on a job that should have been subject to normal VAT rules, and HMRC raises an assessment for underpaid output tax.

  1. Is the work within the scope of the CIS?

Traditional building services are obviously all included under the CIS, such as electricians, plumbers, bricklayers, decorators, carpenters etc. If in doubt, refer to the useful HMRC guidance on the CIS.

  1. Is the work subject to either 5% or 20% VAT?

Any zero-rated sales are excluded from the new DRC regime, eg construction work on new dwellings.

  1. Is the customer an end user or intermediary supplier for the work?

The DRC only applies if the customer makes an onward supply of construction services to their own customer: ie the typical subcontractor, contractor and customer arrangement. In cases where the contractor is not supplying on the construction services, the work is excluded from the reverse charge. This can happen where:

The customer is an ‘end user’

This would be relevant if, for example, a bricklayer carried out work at the head office of his builder customer, or perhaps at a property that the customer owns and rents out. In other words, the service is not supplied on by the builder receiving the bricklayer’s services. The onus is on the customer to tell the bricklayer if it is an ‘end user’ for any job. If so, VAT will be charge in the normal way by the bricklayer.

The customer is an ‘intermediary supplier’

This is a business that is registered for both CIS and VAT that is connected or linked to end users. The connection is based on s1161, Companies Act 2006 (ie, the two entities are in the same corporate group or undertaking).

A link exists if both the intermediary supplier and the end user have a relevant interest in the same land where the work is taking place (eg, a landlord and tenant arrangement). So, even though the intermediary supplier is making an onward supply of construction services to the end user, the supplies it receives from other builders, such as my imaginary bricklayer, will be subject to normal VAT rules rather than the reverse charge.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak reveals date of next Budget

 

The next Budget will be held on 3 March 2021, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced.

He said it would “set out the next phase of the plan to tackle the virus and protect jobs”.

A budget had been expected to take place in Autumn, but this was scrapped due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Sunak also announced that the furlough scheme, which subsidises the wages of workers hit by the virus, will be extended from March to April 2021.

Governments usually use the Budget to outline the state of the country’s finances and propose tax changes.

This will be Mr Sunak’s second budget since he became chancellor.

The budget will come at a difficult time for the UK economy as it faces the fallout from the pandemic.

Official forecasts have predicted the biggest economic decline in 300 years with the UK’s national income expected to shrink by 11.3% in 2020 and not return to pre-crisis levels until the end of 2022.

Government borrowing will also rise to its highest level outside of wartime – and unemployment is predicted to increase to 2.6 million, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Speaking in Parliament earlier this year, Mr Sunak warned that “our economic emergency has only just begun.”

He said that, although the high levels of borrowing were justified in order to deal with the virus, “the situation is clearly unsustainable over the medium term.”

The Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank has warned that tax rises of more than £40bn a year are “all but inevitable” to stop debt from spinning out of control.

Economic cost of Covid crisis prompts call for one-off UK wealth tax

The government has been urged to launch a one-off wealth tax on millionaire households to raise up to £260bn in response to the coronavirus pandemic, as the crisis damages Britain’s public finances and exacerbates inequality.

The Wealth Tax Commission – a group of leading tax experts and economists brought together by the London School of Economics and Warwick University to examine the case for a levy on assets – said targeting the richest in society would be the fairest and most efficient way to raise taxes in response to the pandemic.

In a highly anticipated report, the group, which has drawn attention from the Commons Treasury committee and the former head of the civil service, Sir Gus O’Donnell, said its proposals would be preferable to a broad-based tax raid on workers’ incomes and consumer spending.

It said a wealth tax could raise £260bn over five years if the threshold was set at £1m per household, with a levy of 1% payable on the value of their assets above this level. This would be equivalent to raising VAT payable on goods and services by 6p, or by adding 9p to the basic rate of income tax for the same period, the commission said.

The tax would apply to a person’s total wealth – including their home and any other properties, pension pots, business and financial wealth. Any debts, such as mortgages, would be deducted. At thresholds of £500,000, £1m and £2m per person, a wealth tax would respectively cover 17%, 6%, and 1% of the adult population.

To sidestep concerns that a new wealth tax could hurt people who are ‘“asset rich but cash poor” who could be forced to sell their home to pay the tax bill, the Commission said the one-off levy could be spread out over five years and people could be offered more time to pay.

Arun Advani, assistant professor at the University of Warwick, who is one of three commissioners behind the study, said: “We’re often told that the only way to raise serious tax revenue is from income tax, national insurance contributions, or VAT. This simply isn’t the case, so it is a political choice where to get the money from, if and when there are tax rises.”

The UK government’s budget deficit – the gap between spending and tax income – is on track to hit almost £400bn this year, as the state pumps billions of pounds into its pandemic response and tax receipts plunge amid the Covid recession.

Although the chancellor has been urged to delay tax rises or spending cuts until the economy is on a sustainable path to recovery, he used last month’s spending review to freeze public sector pay and cut the overseas aid budget. Sunak has also warned that “hard choices” on tax and spending will be required in future.

Calls for a wealth tax have been made before with little impact, amid fears that a levy on assets would go down badly with some voters and could hurt people with valuable homes but low incomes. Sunak has previously dismissed calls for a wealth tax, saying he believed there would never be an appropriate time for such a plan.

It said that one-off taxes have been used after major crises before, including in France, Germany and Japan after the second world war and in Ireland after the 2008 financial crisis.

Rebecca Gowland, the head of inequality campaigning at Oxfam, said: “At a time when so many people are facing hardship as a result of the pandemic, this feasible and deliverable one-off wealth tax could transform lives – an uncomfortable truth for vested interests that are likely to resist it.

“The difference this revenue could make for the most vulnerable in society is staggering. Just a quarter of the extra money raised would be enough to keep and extend the social security weekly uplift and allow us to meet our lifesaving aid promise to the world’s poorest people.”

New SEISS conditions may trip up taxpayers

The SEISS claims portal reopens on Monday 30 November, but taxpayers must declare their trade has been impacted by reduced demand before they claim the third grant.

When claiming the first two self-employed income support (SEISS) grants taxpayers had to confirm that their trade had been adversely affected by the coronavirus pandemic, which was a difficult concept to pin down. For the SEISS.3 this condition has been replaced with a more precise “impact on demand” test.

Where they qualify for the SEISS.3 grant the taxpayer will receive one lump sum payment to cover the three-month period: 1 November 2020 to 31 January 2021. It will be paid at 80% of the taxpayer’s average trading profits for 2016/17 to 2018/19, as calculated for the SEISS.1 grant.

The maximum SEISS.3 grant payable is £7,500, or £2,500 per month, which is also the same cap as applied for the SEISS.1 grant.

Declarations

The HMRC guidance on checking whether the taxpayer can claim the SEISS.3 grant confirms the individual must be:

  • currently trading and be “impacted by reduced demand”; or
  • has been trading but the business is temporarily closed due to coronavirus.

The trader must also confirm they are:

  • intending to continue to trade; and
  • they reasonably believe that the impact on their business will cause a significant reduction in their trading profits due to reduced business activity, capacity or demand, or inability to trade due to coronavirus during the period 1 November 2020 to 31 January 2021.

Emphasis on sales not costs

The previous “adversely affected” test was met if the business turnover had decreased, or alternatively if business costs had increased, due to the pandemic. There was no minimum threshold for the adverse effect, so even a small increase in costs or drop in sales meant the business would qualify.

The reduced demand test is set out in a new HMRC Direction for SEISS.3 at para 4.2. It requires the trader to suffer a significant reduction in trading profits for the relevant basis period (see below). “Significant” is not defined, so it must take its normal English definition as having a great effect, or something that affected a situation to a noticeable degree.

The HMRC examples make it clear that an increase in costs alone, resulting in a drop in profits, will not allow the trader to qualify for the grant.

The reduction in sales can be due to a number of factors, but it must also lead to a reduction in profits. If the volume of sales has decreased but the value of each sale has increased so profits are constant, the business does not qualify.

However, if the reduced sales activity is solely due to the business owner having to self-isolate because they, or someone they care for, has travelled into the UK, that business doesn’t qualify for the SEISS.3 grant. Self-isolation due to Covid-19 symptoms, testing or on instruction due to medical vulnerability is accepted as a cause of reduced sales.

Relevant basis period

The new HMRC Direction (legislation for SEISS.3) makes it clear that the significant reduction in trading profits must be measured over the current accounting period as a whole, and that is the period that includes November 2020 to January 2021.

Where the accounting period ends on 31 March or 5 April 2021, it will align to the 2020/21 tax year and be reported on the 2020/21 tax return submitted by 31 January 2022. But many sole traders work to different year end, such as 30 April 2021. This “current period” will be taxed in 2021/22, and reported on the SA return submitted by 31 January 2023.

Other conditions

The other conditions for the SEISS.3 grant are the same conditions as applied for the first two SEISS grants.

The taxpayers who were excluded from those grants are still excluded from the SEISS.3, and this will include those who:

  • started their business after 5 April 2019,
  • submitted their 2018/19 tax return after 23 April 2020
  • had self-employed profits of less than half their average annual income
  • had average annual profits for 2016/17 to 2018/19 in excess of £50,000.

How accountants can help

The SEISS grant must be claimed by the individual taxpayer, online through the HMRC portal, by 29 January 2021. Tax agents should not attempt to make the SEISS claim by using their client’s Government Gateway ID and password, as this will trigger a fraud flag.

However, before claiming the taxpayer made need help in forecasting their turnover for the full accounting period that includes the period November 2020 to January 2021.