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<p>The Government announced at Budget 2021 on 3 March 2021 that the Self-Employment
Income Support Scheme (SEISS) will continue until September, with a fourth and a final
fifth grant. This provides certainty on the policy to business as the economy reopens
and means that the SEISS continues to be one of the most generous schemes for the
self-employed in the world.</p><p> </p><p>The Chancellor also announced that the fourth
and fifth SEISS grants would be based on 2019-20 Self-Assessment tax returns and individuals
must have submitted their 2019-20 tax return by 2 March 2021.</p><p> </p><p>The effect
of this is that more than 600,000 people are brought into scope who either became
self-employed in 2019-20, or were ineligible for previous grants but now may be eligible
for the fourth grant on the basis of submitting their 2019-20 Self Assessment tax
return.</p><p> </p><p>As in previous years HMRC ran a prominent communications campaign
in order to prompt taxpayers to file their return by the due date. This year, in addition,
they issued further press releases during February, complemented by messaging via
social media and, where possible, direct emails and SMS texts to taxpayers who had
not yet filed returns, and their agents.</p><p> </p><p>HMRC analysis of filing volumes
around this period suggests that an estimated 97% of individuals who claimed the third
SEISS grant (about 2.1 million people) had submitted their 2019-20 Self-Assessment
tax return by 28 February.</p>
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