Should I claim SEISS Grant?

calcotti

Jeremy535897 said:

calcotti said:

My opinion is that in this case OP has not been adversely affected.

I think being forced to move online, buy extra equipment and losing six clients would count as adversely affected. I don't think you have to show that overall your business has been adversely affected, just in some way.

Businesses change and evolve all the time. To my mind the final test of adversity for a business is financial impact and it is illogocal not to look at this overall. However I can see both arguments.

sharpe106

You can happily argue both ways like you can with a lot of both schemes. Suppose it really boils down to does the person think they are worse off or not. No worse then people that have been furloughed and are working full time in a 2nd job so are profiting in the current times. 

Jeremy535897

I think @justwhat found some useful guidance:
  https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/77228381#Comment_77228381

TF1

Jeremy535897 said:

I think @justwhat found some useful guidance:
  https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/77228381#Comment_77228381

Thank you for this link.

Hermann

TF1 said:

The crisis has been an odd situation for me, I teach privately and of course I was forced to move my entire teaching practice on-line.
At first I lost 6 customers but then some existing customers booked extra classes as they were stuck at home bored, so to date compared to last year
I'm £3K up on earnings.
However I've been borrowing a laptop, web camera and mic and now I need to buy a new laptop, web camera and mic and that will cost about £2K.
I had a couple of webchat's with HMRC and got to completely conflicting sets of advice!
One advisor told me I had been adversely affected because I need to buy expensive equipment to work on-line that I wouldn't usually needed to buy.
The next advisor said, as my income is up on last year I'm not entitled to make a claim for SEISS.

I just don't know what to do, I don't want to be possibly the 1 person who didn't claim SEISS,
but equally I don't want to get into trouble for erroneously making a claim (though I have a print out of the webchat advice to put a claim in due to buying equipment)
Finally, if any of my current customers decide to drop back to just one class a week, then those lost 6 clients will have an impact on my income, also I had plans to rum a little summer school this summer but that's on hold now, though I don't think SEISS was aimed to cover what I might of earned looking forward to the summer, just March, April, May so far.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Nothing to add about the SEISS claim but £2k seems a lot for a laptop and webcam? 

Are you really 'forced' into spending that much to be able to operate the online teaching?

TF1

Hermann said:

TF1 said:

The crisis has been an odd situation for me, I teach privately and of course I was forced to move my entire teaching practice on-line.
At first I lost 6 customers but then some existing customers booked extra classes as they were stuck at home bored, so to date compared to last year
I'm £3K up on earnings.
However I've been borrowing a laptop, web camera and mic and now I need to buy a new laptop, web camera and mic and that will cost about £2K.
I had a couple of webchat's with HMRC and got to completely conflicting sets of advice!
One advisor told me I had been adversely affected because I need to buy expensive equipment to work on-line that I wouldn't usually needed to buy.
The next advisor said, as my income is up on last year I'm not entitled to make a claim for SEISS.

I just don't know what to do, I don't want to be possibly the 1 person who didn't claim SEISS,
but equally I don't want to get into trouble for erroneously making a claim (though I have a print out of the webchat advice to put a claim in due to buying equipment)
Finally, if any of my current customers decide to drop back to just one class a week, then those lost 6 clients will have an impact on my income, also I had plans to rum a little summer school this summer but that's on hold now, though I don't think SEISS was aimed to cover what I might of earned looking forward to the summer, just March, April, May so far.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Nothing to add about the SEISS claim but £2k seems a lot for a laptop and webcam? 

Are you really 'forced' into spending that much to be able to operate the online teaching?

I'm not an expert on these things, so I was given some advice from a few people who know better than me on some makes and models to look at - they did seem a bit on the expensive side, but apparently something of quality that will last me going forward and has a big screen (my eye sight isn't great these days) isn't cheap.

That said, I'll have another look at what's available as I agree with you.

poppy12345

I totally agree about 2k being a lot for a laptop. 17.3" is the biggest screen size for a laptop. If vision is a problem then just increase the font size. A decent laptop can be bought for less than £1,000.

Hermann

TF1 said:

Hermann said:

TF1 said:

The crisis has been an odd situation for me, I teach privately and of course I was forced to move my entire teaching practice on-line.
At first I lost 6 customers but then some existing customers booked extra classes as they were stuck at home bored, so to date compared to last year
I'm £3K up on earnings.
However I've been borrowing a laptop, web camera and mic and now I need to buy a new laptop, web camera and mic and that will cost about £2K.
I had a couple of webchat's with HMRC and got to completely conflicting sets of advice!
One advisor told me I had been adversely affected because I need to buy expensive equipment to work on-line that I wouldn't usually needed to buy.
The next advisor said, as my income is up on last year I'm not entitled to make a claim for SEISS.

I just don't know what to do, I don't want to be possibly the 1 person who didn't claim SEISS,
but equally I don't want to get into trouble for erroneously making a claim (though I have a print out of the webchat advice to put a claim in due to buying equipment)
Finally, if any of my current customers decide to drop back to just one class a week, then those lost 6 clients will have an impact on my income, also I had plans to rum a little summer school this summer but that's on hold now, though I don't think SEISS was aimed to cover what I might of earned looking forward to the summer, just March, April, May so far.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Nothing to add about the SEISS claim but £2k seems a lot for a laptop and webcam? 

Are you really 'forced' into spending that much to be able to operate the online teaching?

I'm not an expert on these things, so I was given some advice from a few people who know better than me on some makes and models to look at - they did seem a bit on the expensive side, but apparently something of quality that will last me going forward and has a big screen (my eye sight isn't great these days) isn't cheap.

That said, I'll have another look at what's available as I agree with you.

When I hear things like £2k for a laptop I think of people buying Apple products, a Mac Book Pro will easily cost that, but do you really need that? 

There are situations and uses which require a Macbook but I don't think presenting lessons via web chat/video is one of them unless you use particular software that is Apple IOS only. People are readily running lessons online using a decent mobile phone, tablet or ipad.

They are 'nice to have' and do have useable webcams and Mics built in but unless you have plenty of spare money and are happy to spend a bit extra then there are much lower cost alternatives going the Windows (or even Linux) route.

For low cost you can even buy a secondhand ex corporate machine for a few hundred that will still last ages and run well, with some models being extremely robust.

Screen size/eye sight wise it maybe better to consider getting a more 'standard' size laptop and adding a second, plug in, monitor. A 22" - 24" monitor is not expensive and you then have a both a laptop that is not too big to lug about and a much bigger screen to use when set up at home. All do-able sub £600 if you don't go the Apple route.

Grumpy_chap

£2k for a decent video-conferencing facility does not seem unreasonable at all to me - if you are going to make the investment, it is worth making it to get it right, rather than cutting corners and repeating the investment in a few months' time.  Especially if the OP thinks the future will be remote on-line, at least in part, for a long period to come.

If the OP is VAT registered and uses flat-rate scheme, then there is also benefit in being above £2k investment.  Two big bits of speculation in that sentence though.