Self-employed in this tax year - what are we meant to do?!

[bubbaba]

Couldn't find another thread on this but I can't be the only one.
Been hoping and looking forward to the 'self-employed get 80% or normal earnings' announcement yesterday but I've never felt so disappointed or depressed after it.

For people like me who were employed (have been for over 20 years) but went SE this tax year (Jul 2019) I get no financial help. What are people like me supposed to do then?

We have no savings, young family, and ALL my income has now stopped due to covid-19. Its awful, we can't afford to live, was struggling before this and I just feel lost.
I've always tried not to claim Universal credit but I am in the process of applying for it now. But £69/week the eligible to calculator said I was entitled to - I cannot live off that. Anyone else in the same boat?

This was discussed on Jeremy Vine's R2 show today.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000gn39

Fast forward to 34mins. Don't think it's good news, OP.

That number sees low if you have children. Have you run your numbers through entitled to?

Presumably OP has a partner who is in work and Govt will expect him/her to support OP. Plus child benefit.

The means testing should be suspended

There's so many exclusions with the help for self employed, it won't help anywhere near as many as the 95% that they claim.

They were saying they won't help people like you OP because they need to see a tax return. If they waited a week or two, you could do your tax return for the current year and work off that.

DP has done both employed and self employed work on concerts and festivals for about 10 years and has been entirely self employed for most of that time except some time in 2017 and 2018.

For the three tax years that they are counting, 48% of his income is from self employment, so he just misses out on the 'most of your income from self employment'.

Of course he has zero work for the foreseeable and the effect is likely go past getting back to some semblence of normality for most people as many of the large summer festivals have already been cancelled.

We are stuffed. if you don't have three years of accounts to prove your earnings. just stuffed.

Did you also notice the business has to be profitable? they are not going to be bailing out loss-making self-employed folk. they get stuffed automatically. I guess the line has to be drawn somewhere, but exactly what that means for those individuals - I am very afraid.

@JosephineKarlsson thank you will have a listen.

Shame no one has found some way around it. I won't earn a penny more this tax year so I could do my tax return now, seems so unfair😢. People get an extension to 23 April to do the 2018/19 tax but I could have mine for this year done by then so sad it's been done like this.

I do have a partner. He's self employed too, own business, nothing to do with mine, but I do bits for it. Also affected, around 20% of business still continues for him. We will try to claim but it's a business that started 3 years ago and we've been trying to build up. There was a loss last year, Weather plays a big part for the business so that was the reason and so far this year there is a small profit. That's another story though, we had already discussed if can't make business work in next 6m we will knock it on the head and he will go back to an employed job like before. I think I will also look to go back to being employed after all this. Although I love my job there are so many more benefits