Source · Select Committees · Treasury Committee
Recommendation 12
12
Paragraph: 65
The Treasury should in its response to this report provide: • the number of people...
Conclusion
The Treasury should in its response to this report provide: • the number of people with self-employed income as their main source of income in the 2019–20 financial year; • the proportion of the self-employed who had more than £50,000 trading profits in the 2019–20 financial year; • the median income of those above the £50,000 trading profits threshold in the 2019–20 financial year who earned the majority of their income from self- employment; and • the range of costs of applying the recommendations we have made to the SEISS.
Paragraph Reference:
65
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
Your report makes several recommendations regarding eligibility criteria for SEISS. The report requests that the Treasury provides several statistics in relation to these recommendations. Regarding those requests: • HMRC periodically publishes comprehensive statistics on the Self Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS). The last update was on the 25th February 2021.2 The next update is provisionally set to be published in June 2021. • You asked how many people had self-employed income as their main source of income in the 2019–20 financial year. The most complete data that we hold is for 2018–19. Just over 5 million people reported income from self-employment in 2018–19. Of those, 1.4 million did not get the majority of their income from self- employment. • You also asked for the proportion of the self-employed who had more than £50,000 trading profits in 2019–20. While we do not hold a figure for the entirely of 2019- 20, Table 5 in the supplementary statistics shows that there were 186,000 people with trading profits above £50,000 at the end of October 2020. This is just under 4% of the total population of people who reported income from self- employment in 2018–19. • You asked for the median income of those above the £50,000 trading profits threshold in 2019–20 who earned the majority of their income from self- employment. While we do not hold a figure for the entirely of 2019–20, the mean and median income of this group were £267,000 and £118,000 in 2018–19.3 These statistics will be updated in due course. The Government has considered various options through the policy development of the SEISS. We do not have an assessment of the costs of implementing the package of recommendations that you set out in your report.