Martin Lewis urges Rishi Sunak to bring forward fourth self-employed grant date

MARTIN Lewis has urged Rishi Sunak to bring forward the application date for the fourth self-employed grants.

The MoneySavingExpert founder grilled the Chancellor on all the changes he announced as part of his Budget this week.

Mr Sunak yesterday confirmed the self-employed will get a fourth grant worth up to £7,500 to cover three months’ worth of profits through February, March and April.

However, those who are eligible won’t be able to apply until the end of April – the end of the time for which the grant covers.

It is also opening later for applications compared to previous grants.

For example, the third SEISS grant covered November, December and January and opened for applications in November.

Martin asked the Chancellor: “Why is the end of April you’re going to start paying people? Why make them wait so long?”

The Chancellor replied saying the Government needs more time as hundreds of thousands more people are now eligible for the help.

This is after Mr Sunak changed the eligibility so that some 600,000 self-employed Brits who filled in a tax return in January – or are due to – will be able to apply for a grant.

The Chancellor said: “We want to bring in all of those people who have filed tax returns for 19/20 and that means we need to have those come in. 

“I think you also were keen for us to extend or make some flexibility around the deadline we did and that has meant that we need a little bit of extra time to process.”

Who is eligible for SEISS?

As long as newly self-employed people have submitted a tax return by midnight on March 2, they will have access to the final two grants.

However, there are likely to be other criteria applied.

For instance to receive the third grant, you had to meet the following criteria:

• Self-employed workers must have been eligible for the first and second grant – even if you didn’t claim them. (This is with the exception of some people who became eligible after a couple of rule changes in August.)
• You needed to declare that you intended to continue trading and that you were either currently actively trading but impacted by reduced demand due to the coronavirus or previously trading but were temporarily unable to do so due to the pandemic.
• You must have filed a tax return for 2018/19, meaning you must have been self-employed before April 6, 2019.
• You must also have been earning more than half of your total income from self-employment.
• Your trading profit must have been less than £50,000 a year.

The Budget documents say that all the same criteria will apply to the fourth and fifth grants, with more details available in due course.

A fifth and final grant will be available covering lost income for June, July and August.

This value of this grant will be determined by a turnover test,
meaning businesses will get different levels of support.

• The full interview aired on The Martin Lewis Money Show Live ITV 8.30pm tonight

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