👷♀️ Job Support Scheme & Job Retention Bonus
👩🔧 Self Employment Scheme - Extended
📈 Pay As You Grow Scheme for Bounce Back Loans
📅 VAT & Tax liabilities deferred
💷 VAT rate cut continues to 31st March
Yesterday the Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced his Winter Economy Plan which outlined a package of measures that will continue to protect jobs and help businesses through the uncertain months ahead as we continue to tackle the spread of the virus.
Since the beginning of the pandemic the Government has worked tirelessly to protect jobs and businesses, introducing one of the most generous support measures in the world. Already the Government has announced over £190 billion of support - including paying the wages of nearly 12 million people, supporting over a million businesses through grants, loans and rates cuts and announcing the Plan for Jobs in July.
The main announcement was the launch of the Job Support Scheme will directly support the wages of people in work, giving businesses who face depressed winter demand the option of keeping employees in a job on shorter hours rather than make them redundant.
In addition to this the Government has announced the Pay As You Grow scheme – which will give the 1m+ small businesses who accessed £38bn of Bounce Back Loans more time and greater flexibility to repay their loans. Loans can be extended to ten years, nearly halving average monthly repayments, with options to suspend for up to 6 months, or choosing interest only options.
To build on the previous support for self-employed people, the Government is extending the existing self-employed grant on similar terms and conditions as the new Job Support scheme.
VAT & Tax liabilities which were all due in one lump in March can now be spread over 11 repayments, with no interest. This will benefit up to half a million businesses – on average, turning a one off £60k payment in March, into 11 payments of less than £6k.
To support 150,000 businesses and to protect 2.4m jobs through the winter, the lower 5% VAT rate for hospitality and tourism until March 31st next year.
