Self Employed Customer Support

Support for our Self-Employed Customers.

Here at Go Car Credit, we recognise that being Self-Employed in the current climate may be causing you some financial and emotional distress. Some of you may have had to cease working completely whilst others may have seen a dramatic income drop and are forecasting for this to be the case for the next few weeks or months.

We want to reassure you that we are dedicated to giving you the best support possible and we are willing to work with you through this difficult time.

Our Customer Service and Collections teams are having important conversations with all our customers who have been negatively impacted by COVID-19 and are working hard to arrange realistic payment plans and giving our customers tailored and valuable support and options.

To reduce the pressure on these teams we wanted to offer you some alternative resources that may be of interest to you, to hopefully point you in the direction of where you can go to get some financial support until you can get your business up and running again.

Government Support:

The Government has just announced a scheme to support Self Employed workers in this time and the scheme is called the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS).

This scheme offers Self-employed workers, the opportunity to apply for grants worth up to 80% of your profits. This is capped at £2500 per month for 3 months.

The difference between a loan and a grant is you don’t have to pay a grant back!

How much you are entitled to depends on how much profit you have declared to HMRC over the last 3 years.

How to qualify:

• You must have filed a tax return for 2018/19 – This means you must have been self-employed prior to 6 April 2019. If you were due to file a 2018-9 tax return but missed the deadline this year, you’ll have until 26 April to submit your tax return and then you can still access the scheme. However, if you only have a few months’ self-employment on your 2018/19 return, this will be counted as your total profit for the year – the Government won’t pro-rata it based on your monthly profits.
• Were trading and would be trading 2019/20 and onwards if not for COVID-19.
• Have lost or will lose income due to COVID-19
• Your total income must be made up of more than 50% Self-Employed income
• Your average trading profit must be less than £50,000/year.

How does it work:

HMRC will contact those who are eligible as soon as the scheme is ‘operational’ and you will be required to fill in an online form and the grant will be paid directly to your bank.

This payment is likely to be in the form of a lump sum payment in June 2020 (at the earliest).

If you are eligible for this grant but worried about waiting until June 2020 for the payment, or not eligible for SEISS you could consider the following support options:

• Deferral of Self-Assessment income tax payments due in July 2020 and VAT payments due from 20 March 2020 until 30 June 2020 – for more info: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-to-employers-and-businesses-about-covid-19/covid-19-support-for-businesses#support-for-businesses-through-deferring-vat-and-income-tax-payments
• Apply for a ‘Business Interruption Loan’ – for more information or to see if you are eligible visit: https://www.british-business-bank.co.uk/ourpartners/coronavirus-business-interruption-loan-scheme-cbils-2/
• Apply for Universal Credit – the grant will be treated as earnings (but check if you can apply for support before it comes through)
• Check to see if you are eligible for any other benefit support: see article https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/03/coronavirus-self-employed-and-employment-help/#benefits

We would encourage you to review all options available to you before contacting us, as knowing what support you may or not be eligible/entitled to will help us to ensure we are offering the correct solutions and support for you in this difficult time.

All information here was taken from:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/03/coronavirus-self-employed-and-employment-help/

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-a-grant-through-the-coronavirus-covid-19-self-employment-income-support-scheme#who-can-apply