As we explained in our newsletter on 7 May 2020, the self-employed income support scheme (SEISS) was rolled out without access for tax agents. This means your clients have had to submit their own claims, and will no doubt turn to you to sort out any muddles.
If your client has been told by HMRC that he is not eligible to claim SEISS, this may be due to fat finger mistakes when typing the UTR or NI numbers. You can double check the SEISS eligibility by using the online eligibility checker. There is an option at the end to complete a form to request a review by HMRC. You can do this as the taxpayer’s agent.
You may have told your self-employed clients how much SEISS grant to expect. Your client can forward to you the calculation of the SEISS grant which is reflected to him at the end of the claims process. If this figure is not what you expect you or your client can request a review.
The taxpayer should do this as part of the SEISS claim process, but you need to request the review through your own agent’s portal. You will need the following data about the client to hand:
- grant claim reference
- national insurance number
- UTR number
You will also need to say why you think the HMRC calculation of the grant is wrong.
We outlined how the SEISS grant would be calculated in our newsletter on 16 April 2020, but HMRC has recently added more examples of how it uses the figures reported in the tax returns for 2016/17 to 2018/19. Read this guidance before appealing.