In this week s budget, Rishi Sunak extended the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) to half a million people who had previously been denied support on the basis that they had only recently become self-employed. But while the move will be welcome news for these workers, it only deals with a small fraction of the 3 million plus self-employed people who have lost their livelihoods during the pandemic and been prevented from accessing financial support since SEISS came into effect last May. Over the past 10 months, PAYE freelancers, limited company directors, the recently self-employed, and those earning less than 50 per cent of their income from self-employment were among those ineligible for any government support, according to advocacy group Excluded UK. Shockingly, even those who became self-employed in the tax year before the pandemic began have up until now struggled to access government support if they moved from a salaried job into self-employment that ye
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Rishi Sunak began launching several coronavirus themed support measures in March 2020, which stretched from mortgage holidays to Universal Credit boosts and beyond. Eventually, the Chancellor introduced the Job Retention Scheme and the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme which provide income to eligible workers.