Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
The government should act to help self-employed excluded from Covid support because more than 50% of their income comes from elsewhere.
This deliberate exclusion is unfair and disproportionately attacks women on modest incomes, says the influential Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
This is the second time the IFS has waded into the argument about the self-employed in as many days. Yesterday, the IFS published a report calling for the self-employed to pay more tax.
>See also: You should file your tax return by January 31, despite HMRC extension
Over a million self-employed people who have less than 50% of their income coming from self-employment have been excluded from the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS).
The IFS says that it is manifestly unfair that someone who declares profits of 51 per cent from self-employed income can claim the maximum, while those who claim 49 per cent of profits get nothing.
SEISS provides payments once per quarter worth 80 per cent of pre-pandemic profits up to a cap of £7,500 (per quarter) for eligible self-employed workers who have been adversely affected by the pandemic.
The scheme is expected to have cost £28bn by April 2021, making emergency Covid payments to at least