For the last couple of months, hardly a week's gone by where a new grant hasn't either been announced or has gone live.
This week is looking to be no different.
To help point you and your business in the right direction - here's the outlook.
Today
If your business occupies more than 1 non-domestic business premises, it may be eligible for an additional grant in respect of your additional buildings.
If you've already applied for the £10k or £25k Business Support Scheme grants from your local authority - and have been successful - you can claim for another 75% of these grants in respect of subsequent qualifying buildings.
This additional scheme, providing grants of £7,500 and £18,500, respectively, went live last Tuesday (5th May), and is also being administered by your local authority.
Remember, the key thing here is the rateable value of the additional non-domestic premises. Full details here.
13 May 2020
Claims under the 'Self Employment Income Support Scheme' (SEISS) goes live on Wednesday 13th May. This is for everyone trading in a self employed capacity, i.e. as a sole trader or via a partnership. Employees and directors of limited companies are not eligible for assistance under this scheme.
We've covered the scope of the SEISS in previous articles on this site - now it's time for the claims to be made!
Before Wednesday though, you can check if you're actually eligible to claim under the SEISS by clicking here.
Rather annoyingly, and unlike for the Job Retention Scheme - HMRC have not permitted accountants and tax agents to file this claim on behalf of their clients. This means the taxpayer will be responsible for making the claim themselves.
In order to do this, you will need a government gateway username and password. To ensure you have these, we strongly advise that you use this eligibility checker before Wednesday - which will also allow you to set up your government gateway access.
Payments are expected to be made to into taxpayers bank accounts within 6 working days of submitting the claims!
The long-term outlook
Orkney Islands Council have announced a new loan scheme for businesses - similar to the already available government schemes, CBILS and Bounce Back Loan Scheme.
However, unlike the slightly smaller Bounce Back Loans, these OIC loans will be secured, and will be for sums between £50k and £100k.
Similar to the existing government schemes, OIC's loans will also run for a term of up to 6 years, and will not require you to make any repayments for the first 12 months.
Full details of how to apply for this aren't live yet, but we'll be sure to let you all know once they are!
Similarly, we'll be sure to keep an eye out for any more grants or funding this week. It's an ever-changing space at the moment!
Other ways to boost your business . . .
Of course, these government and public body grants and cheap loans won't go on forever.
At some point, businesses are going to have to trade themselves out of their current siutation, and sufficiently boost their trading profits in order to repay the debt which they might have inevitably accumulated over the last couple of months.
This is something which we're working closely with our clients on, and is more important now than ever before.
If you want to discuss your situation, or have any concerns about your long term ability to continue trading, please get in touch and we'll be happy to work with you to put you and your business back in control of your finances!
