Expansion of self-employed grants welcomed
ENTREPRENEUR
Nichola Mckay said she was pleased to see the selfemployed grant scheme extended to more workers – albeit a little late.
The 47-year-old, who set up her own home fragrance business just months before the pandemic struck, missed out on earlier rounds of the Coronavirus Self-employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS) because she was one of nearly 600,000 people who could not prove their income on their tax return.
The Chancellor announced today that those who completed tax returns for the 2019/20 financial year will now qualify for the new raft of payments.
Ms Mckay, who runs Olapip Home from her
home in Renfrewshire, said: “This time last year, my business was only months old, so I was one of the businesses that fell through the gap, so I had absolutely no support because I only went live in September 2019.
“It really was a scary time, I had left a paying career to take that leap and set up my own business, then all of a sudden events and markets and fairs, all of these things that I was using for brand awareness, all closed.
“So I’m glad to see that there’s now assistance for the newly self-employed, those that filed returns in 2019/20. We’ll be eligible for the fourth and fifth grant.
“However, I do feel that’s been a bit late. Fine, we’ve been recognised now, but we were just left for a long time with no support.”
Despite the challenges, the businesswoman told how she managed to adapt her business, which has actually grown over the last year.
She welcomed a freeze on VAT, as her business has just become VAT registered, and on fuel duty.
“Fuel duty being frozen again is also useful,” she said. “I’ve had to adapt my business, I’m having to do local deliveries, so the thought of a tank of fuel going up in price wouldn’t have been welcome.”
However, Ms Mckay claimed she was irked by the fact the Chancellor failed to mention Brexit in his Budget.
She said: “One thing I noticed that wasn’t really spoken about in the Budget was Brexit.
“It’s been an absolute headache in the sense of the logistics, the slowdown of the supply chain because of hold-ups in the ports. It’s a mess and it has a huge impact on businesses.
“To not have anything mentioned about that was a bit annoying.”
Overall, though, she was quite happy with what came out of the Chancellor’s statement.
“Rishi Sunak had a difficult task to do and I think on the whole it’s a decent Budget,” she said.