If you received any COVID-19 support grants, such as CJRS, SEISS or Eat Out to Help Out, you must be aware that these are taxable, so they need to be declared on your business’ tax return.
Tips For Declaring Your COVID-19 Grants
When submitting your corporation tax (CT), all amounts received must be reported for the accounting period covered by the return. This should not include grants claimed for the period and then paid in a later period.
The first CJRS grants were paid in April 2020, but the CT return forms were not amended to include an option to report them until September 2021. For this reason, if your submitted your CT form before this new version was released, the grant figures will not be easy to spot.
In some cases, HMRC will not match the reported CJRS grant on the CT return with the amount paid to the company, so may ask you to submit an explanation.
If you receive a letter from HMRC, please contact us as soon as possible. This letter must be taken seriously, and you will need to reply within 30 days. Failure to do this may trigger a former tax enquiry into your business.
To resolve the issue, we will either amend the CT return to include any missed COVID-19 grant income or confirm with HMRC that all grant income has already been included within the reported income.