COVID19 Thursday 7th May 2020

Hudson Contract Updates

Thursday 7th May 2020

COVID-19: Self-Employed Income Support Scheme

Dear Client

The government have announced that they will open the applications for the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS) on Wednesday 13 May.

In the meantime operatives can go online to check to see if they are eligible and obtain their claim time by visiting https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-a-grant-through-the-coronavirus-covid-19-self-employment-income-support-scheme#eligible

They will need their UTR and national insurance numbers, and at the end of the process they will need to create a government gateway ID and password, if they don’t already have one.

All payments made under SEISS will be made direct from HMRC, Hudson is not involved in the process or calculations.

Key details about the SEISS grant scheme:

It is a one-off payment covering 3 months of lost profit.
The payment will be capped at £7,500.
They can continue to work and earn as the scheme tops up the difference in normal profit.
The grant needs to be included in their tax return.

Operatives won’t be able to claim if:

They did not submit a 2018/2019 tax return by 23 April 2020.
They make a profit of more than £50,000/year.
They are paid more as an employee than they make in profits as self-employed.

Please feel free to pass this onto any operatives that contact you, but should they have any queries about their own circumstances please advise them to contact HMRC directly.

Ian Anfield MICE

Managing Director

Call 01262 401040 or email payroll@hudsoncontract.co.uk

1 Mill Lane, Bridlington, East Yorkshire, YO16 7AP

Thursday 26th March 2020

Amendment to Coronavirus Bill to help the self-employed

Last night an amendment to the Coronavirus Bill which would compel government to help the self-employed was voted through by MPs. However, this does not mean that money will find its way to the self-employed quickly, the Bill simply says that government must cover 80% of the income of the self-employed up to £2,917/month – similar to the assistance scheme announced for employees.

The Bill must now pass through various stages to become law, and the civil servants in various departments must design a scheme which will cover five million people working under a number of different tax schemes. Government is cautious about over promising because other help schemes are struggling to get off the ground or are being swamped.

If government says that the engagers of the self-employed should pay the 80% (capped) to the self-employed, the cost of paying those under Hudson contracts alone would be £26.9m/week. We, like most large companies, simply could not fund this, so we would need the government or our clients to help by funding these payments.

As with all government schemes, the devil will be in the detail, so our lawyers are watching carefully as the government policies develop. In the meantime our advice to subcontractors is to be careful with their money, to look at whether or not they can suspend mortgage and or loan payments, to get their self-assessment tax returns in as soon as they can, and to sit tight until we can share the details of any government help scheme.

As promised in previous messages, Hudson will be here throughout operating as near normal as we can. We have also made suggestions to government detailing some quick and simple steps that could be taken to give at least the Hudson subcontractors some breathing space. We could return the CIS deductions taken in March, make payments for HMRC on account of self-assessment returns, or we could set up a government loan scheme. Unfortunately they are more likely to go for a much more complicated ‘catch all’ scheme which will take a long time to filter though.

Watch this space and stay safe.