𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝟑𝐫𝐝 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚
You can get as much as £7,500. This is made up of 80% of three months’ worth of average monthly trading profits capped at £2,500/month. To calculate this, HMRC looks at your tax returns from 2018/19, 2017/18 & 2016/17.
You must earn at least 50% of your total income from self-employment. To check this, HMRC will first look at your 2018/19 tax return to see if it was the case then – if you don’t qualify based on 2018/19 alone, it will then look at the tax years 2016/17, 2017/18 and 2018/19 to see if the average of your trading profits across the three tax years was more than 50% of your total income.
Your average trading profit must be less than £50,000/year. This is essentially a ‘cliff-edge’ requirement – so those whose average annual trading profit is more than £50,000 (to be specific, £50,000.01 or above) won’t be able to get any support from this scheme.
At the end of November 2020, HMRC published fresh guidance on who qualifies for the third grant. It’s a bit more strict than the previous two grants and you must satisfy three new criteria – 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒏𝒆𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒌 𝑨𝑳𝑳 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎, 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒘𝒐.