Today, I have written to the Chancellor to ask for more discretion in the distribution of Self-Employment Income Support Scheme grants.
Currently, claimants are only eligible if their self-employed trading profits over the past 1-3 years, not revenue, are higher than their non-trading income.
In some cases, residents have chosen to reinvest their revenue into building up their business, thus decreasing their overall trading profits. Another resident left their job last year to start their own business, and as the pandemic hit, this meant that their employment income superseded their trading profits, leading to their ineligibility for SEISS. Some were left out because their non-trading income was only a few percentage points higher than trading income.
I know that the government have been willing to add flexibility to other Coronavirus Schemes, and hope that they apply the same principle here by allowing more discretion where claimants are clearly dependent on their self-employed income.
