Coronavirus: "I’m self-employed, what can I do?" Help from Kevin Sefton of untied

If you’re self-employed, you’ve probably heard about the government’s new Self-employment Income Support Scheme to help you during the coronavirus emergency.

Kevin Sefton, co-founder of untied, the UK’s personal tax app, has put together the following information for Revolut Business account holders on what it means, and how we’ve partnered up to help. This is great news if you need to do a tax return. Things are of course changing quickly, so this blog gives Kevin’s views and up to date information at the time of publication.

Who this will help:

• This help is for people who are self-employed in their own name (this means that you fill in the self-employment part of your tax return)
• Millions of people will benefit including taxi drivers, gig workers, graphic designers and musicians

But there are also some limits which we describe below.

What the Government is offering:

If you’re self-employed you can receive up to £2.5k per month for three months, calculated as 80% of your average monthly profits,

You qualify if:

• You sent in a tax return for 2018-19 (covering April 6th, 2018, to April 5th, 2019) and self-employment makes up more than half of your income
• You traded in 2019-20 (i.e. the period we’re in at the moment, from April 6th, 2019, to April 5th, 2020)
• You intend to continue to trade in 2020-21 (i.e. it means that if you’ve closed your self- employment business permanently you probably won’t qualify)
• Your self-employment profits are under £50,000
• If you work in a partnership with someone and share the money you make, then you would both qualify for support

What to do if you’re self-employed

• There’s help out there – you’re not on your own (see below for what Revolut and untied are doing.)
• The most important thing is to ensure your tax returns are up-to-date and correct. If you haven’t filed for 2018/19 then do this as soon as possible; HMRC have said there is a cut-off of 23 April 2020, in order to be eligible for the support.
• Other than ensuring that your tax returns are up-to-date, you don’t need to do anything at the moment. You will be contacted by HMRC, and the scheme will only be available via GOV.UK - as of 2 April, we don’t know the exact timing on this.
• You’ll be paid the money directly by HMRC.
  

Those who may not get the support

• If you have trading profits over £50,000 in both 2018/19 and as an average between 2016-2019, you will not qualify
• It also looks likely that if you have been self-employed for under a year, you may lose out. This is a concern given the high turnover in self-employment.
• This scheme is also currently not available if you are self-employed through a limited company (other support may be available to you).

How Revolut and untied are helping

• The untied app has been designed to make taxes easy–it’s designed for people, not accountants.
• untied has made their service free for three months, which will cover the period in which to do your tax returns for 2018/19 and 2019/20.

Anyone connecting a Revolut account to untied will automatically get another two months free use of the untied app. This means that as Revolut customer signing up to untied you can get five months of the untied Essentials plan including:

• Multiple income sources
• Unlimited bank accounts
• Return submission
• Support
• File even if you don’t know your HMRC login (usually part of premium package)
• You can find untied at www.untied.io or by searching for untied in the App Store or Google Play Store.

If you need help with your tax return or have other tax questions, you can contact untied and say you’re a Revolut customer on their website or by emailing revolut.help@untied.io.

Other advice

• Don’t rely on the money coming in immediately–make arrangements such as extending overdrafts or credit card limits if you need to.
• More information on the Self-employment Income Support Scheme can be found here.

About untied

untied is the UK’s personal tax app supporting the 12 million people in the UK who submit a personal tax return including 6 million self-employed. untied is available on Android and iOS with five star ratings. The award-winning business’s investors include Barclays Bank. untied is regulated by the FCA, supervised by the Institute of Tax and recognised by HMRC. www.untied.io

About the guest speaker

Kevin Sefton is a co-founder of untied, the UK’s personal tax app. untied has been set up to make people’s taxes quick and easy. Originally a tax accountant with a big firm, he has been self-employed for most of his career. Through the COVID-19 outbreak, he’s been supporting his neighbours by baking bread.