What about the self employed?

There are around 5 million self employed people in the UK, many of which have found themselves in ‘no mans land’ with the financial support released so far.

Yesterday evening gave a huge amount of support for employers and employees with the 80% wage pay promise.

But what about the self employed people, those in the trades, the hairdressers, the small cafe owners etc?

So far they can access benefits to match the rate of SSP employees are entitled to and they have been promised an increase in benefit payments next year along with removal of the minimum income floor for universal credit.

They also have the cash grants / rates relief available if they have premises, mortgage holidays and time to pay for self assessment.

But let’s face it, people in employment who were fearing job losses, took a sigh of relief yesterday evening when they heard about the job retention scheme, whilst the self employed are still panicking about how they will survive financially.

Who knows what is to come, but here are my thoughts:

To offer a similar package to the self employed would be much more complicated to plan out.

To assess the income of the self employed, which is not submitted monthly like that of PAYE employees, would take a lot longer.

The government are having to act unbelievably fast to keep the economy going, rolling out incredible measures almost overnight.

The financial help promised so far has been tremendous, let’s hope the next announcements include the same level of support for the self employed.

Samantha Mitcham - 21.03.2020