Calling all freelancers! Are you having problems with the government’s recently announced assistance scheme?
The UK government's new COVID-19 packages cover a fair amount of the workforce, but many people have also fallen through the cracks!
Representatives from the government have been in touch with my amazing COO @John Down to identify issues that freelancers are experiencing – beyond those that they’re already aware of (see list below).
How are you coping? Are you having problems with the government’s recently announced assistance scheme?
https://the-dots.com/asks/government-assistance-for-freelancers-please-share-your-questions-any-advice-re-navigating-the-govt-s-new-scheme-5059
It’s worth mentioning that the government is already aware of the following issues and is apparently working to resolve them:
- Freelancers who have started freelancing in the last tax year
- If you are having problems applying / qualifying for Universal Credit
- Small companies that have yet to make a profit being excluded
- Small companies unable to get / having problems getting loans through the CBILS programme
- Freelancers who have previously paid themselves from their companies by dividends not being supported
- Freelancers who fall above the £50k profit cap
- The low level of the monetary support
Please add any problems (beyond those above) that you’re having with the scheme. We’ll then feed these back to the government asap, so they know the system is not working for you.
Also, if you see someone's comment you can help with, please jump in!
If we support each other we really will get through this, just you watch.
Thanks everyone.
Replies50
- Hi!I became freelance last January and did not make profit in my first year.So now I will not be eligible for any income support from the government through self employed grants. I had started to make consistent profits over the last 7 months. Luckily some work is still available but a large amount has dried up for now, due to social distancing.Thank you.J
- Hi there - thank you so much for providing this!I am struggling to access much support at all - my working situation means I have two zero hours/casual contract PAYE jobs (one account for 50%ish income, the second 15% income) and self employed freelance (35%).My first job are putting me on furlough, which means an average of about 2 days a week (80% of this). The second PAYE job I have I haven't worked there since Dec so I have asked if they can furlough me to an average monthly wage but they haven't got back to me yet and I think it's a long shot. My freelance income is totally lost right now and I am not eligible for self-employment support.I am not eligible for UC (live with partner on full time wage) or for New Style JSA (furloughed hours are just over 16 hour max), so looking at being on around 40% of my usual income for the foreseeable future. This basically covers my rent and bills and leaves a little for food.I am sure I'm not the only one in this situation, and I don't know what else I can do! Thank you so much for any help.
- I have only started freelancing in February and therefore I'm excluded from any support.
- Hi Pip,Thanks so much for asking for our feedback.One of my main concerns is in relation to the duration that support will be available. The support seems to be available for the duration of the pandemic but I feel there needs to be an understanding that freelance work is unlikely to start up again for a while after this.I can't speak for all freelancers but speaking for production, much of my work goes from a brand's marketing team - to a PR company- to a production agency - to myself, the freelancer. This process will take weeks at best, more likely months. In a normal instance the lag time caused by this process would be happening in the background whilst we were working on current projects so we wouldn't suffer because of it, it would be a process factored in to our planning.The freelance work stream was once of the first to feel the cut in the process and will be one of the last to restart so a consideration of a longer support period would be really helpful.Thank you,Francesca
- @Jessica Oxley yes, you make a really good point about less work around the that time of the year. Many of us aren't getting work and Spring is when things start to pick up..
- @Pip Jamieson Thankyou Pip!
- Dear everyone, thank you so much for all of these! It’s been heartbreaking reading & we’ve fedback everything - god I hope it helps! Pip@Annie Kruntcheva@Anna Butterworth@Nikki Gray@Florian Kremb@Vitor Meuren@Barry Tranter@Anthony Smith@alex godfrey@Nicola Humphreys@Michael Mason@Lauren Mason@Colin Wright@Kam Phullar@Jonathan Harris@Gavin Kemp@Greatergood London@Sarah Peters
- Dear everyone, thank you so much for all of these! It’s been heartbreaking reading & we’ve feedback everything - god I hope it helps! Pip@Sally Shore@Jessica Oxley@Lauren Pope@Anushka Kandola@Caitlin Mogridge@Alanna Proctor@Nick & Steve@Jodie McCallum@Zoe Willis@Bobby Palmer@Felicia Sewerinsson@Marian Naranjo@Emily-Jayne Nolan@Sharon Tanton@Kristina Zambrano@Karishma Bolakee@Janie Dowling@Gemma Lofthouse@Theresa Hartlieb
- @Jodie McCallum 100% this. I don't understand why 'PAYE' freelancers, who are taxed at source, can't receive the same benefits as 'self-employed' freelancers who file self-assessments. It makes no sense.
- I'm a PAYE freelancer and have worked in TV & film industry for the past 8 years.The business is seasonal busy over summer and quiet around Christmas. Due to this myself and many others didnt have a current contract at the time to qualify for the JRS or help proposed for the Self Employed. The last long contract I had was in November 2019, since then I have worked on 'daily' contracts & commercials expecting the work to begin again in March, but obviously now have no jobs for the foreseeable as the industry is shut down.As others have mentioned we pay tax and NI at source, but dont receive any of the benefits of being an employee, like pension or sick pay. HMRC have access to all the details of how much I earn and how much I have contributed in tax and NI, so could take an average of earnings and pay the 80% that PAYE employees would receive.I have been led to believe that claiming UC is the only option left, however I dont believe I will qualify as my partner is employed.
- Hello,My situation is similar to many other people. I'm self-employed and in my second year of business. In 2018/19 my profit was over £50k so I'm not entitled to support. For 2019/20 my profit will be under. In addition, my husband has been too sick to work for almost a year now, so my income is all we have. I'm trying to keep working, but all my potential projects were cancelled and it's a tough market to look for work.
- I’ve been working as both employed and freelance. Most of my earnings came from my employer, but of course I’ve now been let go.Since over 50% of my earnings came from my employer, I’m not eligible to access the self employed scheme. Nor can I access any help as an employee.
- I’m absolutely desperate for help because:- My earnings fall above the £50k average for 2016-2019 by £5k and I don’t understand why PAYE people receive a capped £2500 but we get nothing- My 2019-2020 tax return was a car crash, I earned almost nothing so it would bring my average well below the cap. Arguably this is the most relevant tax return to determine someone’s current financial situation?- I’m a seasonal worker (I shoot festivals/weddings/summer brand activations) so all my sources of income have cancelled until summer 2021. I earn almost nothing over the winter and this isn’t taken into account if lockdown is lifted in say September. I’ve lost my opportunity to work for the year- A business interruption loan and deferred tax payments only help if you’ve been able to earn money, which I won’t be until June 2021 because all festivals have cancelled now- Universal credit, although welcome, is only £317 a month and my unavoidable outgoings are £1600. Once the mortgage holiday period ends I will be homeless within weeksIt’s hard not to get resentful when I’ll be forced out of my home because of this and others get generous payouts :(
- Hi Pip,I started freelancing in Jan 2019 after loosing my job of 11 months in London, so for that tax year I was only self employed for 3 months and didn’t earn a huge amount.In the past year I’ve earned a lot more but it won’t be taken into consideration which is incredibly frustrating. I’ve also lost the majority of my work that I has booked in for the next 6 months. It’s almost impossible to find new work considering most places are closing or are in bad positions with money. I also got through with UC but because I have a tiny tiny regular income (although I don’t expect that to last long) I will barely get any help and it won’t help cover my bills or rent let alone food.Hope everyone is doing ok in these worrying times. All my love x
- Points 2, 4 and 5. But on top of that, I haven't heard about my mortgage holiday yet with one payment already going out on the 1st of April. Plus, even more frustrating, late/non payment of invoices by agencies. And I have noticed out of the very few jobs out there the rates agencies are offering to pay have also decreased at a time when freelancers need support the most. Have agencies cut their costs to clients? I seriously doubt it.
- Hey Pip, thanks for doing this. I’m a PAYE freelancer and I’m really disappointed that we aren’t included in the self employed grant. I’ve been a PAYE freelancer for 3+ years and have paid my tax & n.i like everybody else. HMRC has all our details so I feel including us in the self employed grant would be the easiest and fairest way as we would receive 80% of our monthly earnings. I can’t believe the government are expecting freelancers to chase their employers and beg to be furloughed - many employers aren’t willing to do this - a lot of them don’t have the cash flow to pay staff wages up front. I have 3 main employers, one of which has already made me redundant (events company) and said it cannot re employ to furlough due to cash flow issues, this employer was my main source of income which has now completely gone. Another is allowing us to work (which is great) but limiting the amount of shifts we can do. And the other is looking at furloughing me, however this is the employer I earn the least with. So even with this I’m still losing out compared to what I’d receive if I was given 80% of my monthly wages in the self employed grant. My rent is £900 pcm and I can’t get rent relief. I would love to continue working where possible but I won’t now be able to work for the company that are looking at furloughing me. It seems unfair that PAYE freelancers will struggle to continue to work and get less support than those who are self employed. I created a petition and really feel that the best form of support for us would be if the government includes us in the self employed grant - https://www.change.org/UKParliamentProtectPAYEFreelancersCOVID-19 Jodie x
- Hey PipI started my consultancy in November 19. Like many start ups I lived by my own means for a few months until clients started to come in. Unluckily one client failed to pay a chunky bill (still fighting it at my own cost) plus since I’ve only been trading 5 months I’m not entitled to any help other than universal credit which I think we can all agree doesn’t quite cut it. Having spent 20 years in full time employment, with most of those in the higher tax bracket, it feels a bit of a blow to not be able to get any real support right now.Anyway. That’s my tale. Hope you and everyone is safe and bearing up!Zoe
- Hey Pip –I went freelance in Jan 2019, after being let go from a full-time job in Dec 2018. I had 8-ish months of full-time salary on my 18/19 tax return, while most money I earnt freelance started to come into my account in the 19/20 tax year (as is the way with invoicing as a freelancer).That means I earnt more than 50% of my money full-time in the 18/19 tax year, so I don't qualify for the government assistance scheme – even though I could provide accounts to prove that I've now been freelance for almost a year and a half.Essentially, the government judging me on my 18/19 return means they're going to treat me as someone who earns freelance money as a top-up to a full-time salary... even though I haven't earnt that full-time salary for 16 months.
- Hi Pip, thank you for giving us a platform to keep this conversation going for those of us who are not getting any help at the moment.The problem that I face is that I started my business just before the end of the 2016-17 tax year, making very little as I was literally just starting out. I was trying to do things the right way and register my business as I started making money, even if it wasn't much.The three years after this tax year I have seen my business grow by more than ten-fold in 17-18, then from 17-18 to 19-20, it grew by another 4-fold and this tax year it's grown significantly yet again. By including my first year of business rather than this tax year I will be 'entitled' to less than UC and I won't be able to live, whereas if I include this tax year instead of the first year I have enough to pay the bills and get by. I would apply for UC, but I live with a partner who is working part-time to support his studies. Even if he did go full-time, it wouldn't be enough for us both but his work is still, from what I understand, making me not eligible for UC.
- @Emily-Jayne Nolan Thanks Emily, will do!
- @Marian Naranjo A little tip I've come across is, if you put a note in your "journal" section on Universal Credit, about not being able to verify your identity etc. someone will be notified that you've made an entry, and this should speed up the process a little bit. After I put that in my notes, I had someone call me within the next week - they added notes into my journal to say they'd arranged a call for me on a certain date and time, hope this helps! x
- Hello, thanks for your work on this. I’m been self employed for less than a year, and was a director of a ltd company before that so fall through lots of gaps. I wrote this on my blog, an idea for a scheme that could help people like us https://www.sharontanton.co.uk/blog/help-for-the-self-employed-left-out-in-yesterdays-scheme
- I’m also in a very grey area. Limited company was closed as was going to go perm this year (as freelance market was already bad), and can’t get universal as my partner has a high income (although his company has been shut down due to covid). Just had to borrow another 5k from my bank to buy food and cover my bills. I just see myself falling into more debt and eventually going bankrupt.
- Hi Pip,Thank you very much for all your hard work.I became a fulltime freelance since December, meaning that I am part of the "freelancing in the last tax year"Also, I have signed up for Universal Credit and it said that they are unable to identify myself.I have no help whatsoever and all my monthly bills go over £1.250,00. And the 4 projects I had coming for the April has been cancelled.Thanks.
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