Originally written by Anna Jordan on Small Business
Rishi Sunak recently announced that an extra 600,000 self-employed business owners would be able to claim the fourth and fifth Self Employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS) grants.
The one condition is that applicants must have submitted a tax return by March 3 2021.
But vague details, complicated processes, tight deadlines and worries around scammers mean that many could be missing out, warn financial experts Old Mill.
One example is when those who apply get contacted by HMRC and are sent an email with instructions on how to verify their identity. They then have two days to upload digital copies of their bank documents and ID to the HMRC Dropbox. If they don’t, the Dropbox link will expire and the applicant will fail the pre-verification.
“There are a number of areas where things can go wrong (just opening a brown envelope from HMRC for instance), and I have real concerns that some people may have difficulties negotiating these pre-verification checks or inadvertently miss deadlines,” said Chris Bowles, director of Old Mill.
“There’s also a fear that many traders will see this HMRC call as another sophisticated attempt to obtain sensitive personal information at a time when attacks from scammers

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