Support Available During Covid-19

Following on from my previous article this update is to set out the main measures now announced by the Government (including those announced yesterday by the Chancellor) to help support businesses, employees and the self-employed deal with the impact of Covid-19.

The new measures announced yesterday by the Chancellor focussed more on the employed and self-employed and are as follows:

• The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme - this scheme means all UK employers will be able to access support to continue paying part of their employees’ salary for those employees that would otherwise have been laid off during this crisis. Please note that this does not apply to all of your employees. The benefit to you, as the employer, is that when business returns to normal these employees will be able to return to work but HMRC will have covered up to 80% of their salary (based on a maximum of ￡2,500 per month) during the period of their absence. This support will be backdated to 1 March 2020 but is likely not to be fully operational until the end of April as HMRC need to work on updating their systems to be able to facilitate this.
• Deferral of VAT Payments from 20 March 2020 to 30 June 2020 - this deferral is automatic and you do not need to apply to take advantage of this. You will be given until the end of the 2020 to 2021 tax year to pay the VAT liabilities that you have deferred.
• Deferral of Income Tax Payments due on 31 July 2020 to 31 January 2021 - this deferral is also automatic and you do not need to apply to HMRC to take advantage of it.
• Self-Employed are now able to make a claim for Universal Credit and if you are self-employed and eligible for Universal Credit then you may also be able to claim other benefits such as housing benefit to help with costs such as rent - some links to find out more about the support available for you if you are self-employed are below.

Universal Credit - more information can be found by clicking here

What You May Get - more details of what you can get and eligibility can be found here

A reminder of the measures that have previously been announced are:

• A grant of ￡10,000 to any business that is currently benefiting from the small business rates relief or rural rates relief. These businesses will be contacted by their local authority - you do not need to apply.
• A ￡25,000 grant will be provided to retail, hospitality and leisure businesses operating from premises with a rateable value between ￡15,000 and ￡51,000.
• The government is introducing a business rates holiday for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses in England for the 2020 to 2021 tax year.
• A dedicated helpline has been set up to help businesses and self-employed individuals in financial distress and with outstanding tax liabilities receive support with their tax affairs. Through this, businesses may be able to agree a bespoke Time to Pay arrangement, if you are concerned about being able to pay your tax due to Covid-19 please get in touch with me.
• A Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme, delivered by the British Business Bank, will enable businesses to apply for a loan of up to ￡5 million. Businesses can access the first 12 months of that finance interest-free (increased from the initial 6 months previously announced), as the government will cover the first 12 months of interest payments. Full details of how to apply for these loans will be available from next week but in the meantime, more information is available via the British Business Bank website by clicking here.
• For businesses with fewer than 250 employees, the cost of providing 14 days of Statutory Sick Pay per employee will be refunded by the government in full. Full details of how to make this claim have not yet been released.

As you may already know to make it easier for you to keep up-to-date with all of the announcements we've created a resource page on our website with links to all of the above information which we'll be updating on a regular basis. If you come across anything that you think would be beneficial for us to add to the resource page please just let us know. Link to the page is below, I'd suggest that you add it to your favourites to make it easier for you to be able to come back to as things change in the coming days and weeks.

Budget & Coronavirus Resources

We are in uncertain times so if you need anything at any time please let us know, if you'd prefer to book a call with me then please use the link below to do so

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Best Wishes

Alan