Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will enable theatrical freelances whose self-employment income was incorrectly classified as PAYE by the Royal Opera House to claim the full grants through the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme.

The Government announced at Budget 2021 that the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) will continue until September, with a fourth and a final fifth grant. This provides certainty to business as the economy reopens and means the SEISS continues to be one of the most generous schemes for the self-employed in the world.

HMRC work out SEISS eligibility based on information submitted by individuals on their Self-Assessment tax returns. As the deadline for 2019-20 tax returns has now passed, HMRC will now use these tax returns for the fourth and fifth grants, provided they were submitted by 2 March 2021.

This means 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 tax return.

The SEISS provides generous support to the self-employed, including freelancers who meet the eligibility criteria.

In addition, the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) has been available to all employers with a PAYE system and all employees on PAYE regardless of their employment contract. As such, freelancers and those on short term contracts could be eligible for the CJRS if they are on PAYE and meet the eligibility criteria. The furloughing of staff through the CJRS is a voluntary arrangement, entered at the employers’ discretion and agreed by employees.

People who are ineligible for CJRS and the SEISS may qualify for other elements of the £407bn package of support the Government has made available.