Self-Employed People Who Didn’t Qualify Automatically for $1K Per Month Help Can Apply or Appeal

When DPM Heng announced the Resilience Budget and spoke about the Self-employed Persons Income Relief Scheme (SIRS), whereby eligible self-employed people would get $1,000 a month to help them tide over this stormy period, self-employed people all over Singapore cheered.

That includes the property or insurance agents who’ve been posting images of their BMWs or Mercedes with the hashtag #hustling

But there’s a word that made people worried: eligible.

Who is eligible?

More information was revealed two days ago, and it turns out that only 88,000 people were automatically eligible for it.

50,000 of them are self-employed people who are already in the Workfare Income Supplement Scheme, a scheme that pays low-income workers whether they’re employed by a company or self-employed. The scheme, however, doesn’t pay as much: for example, if a 39-year-old self-employed person earns an annual net trade income (the amount you earn after deducting all expenses) of $23,000, he or she will get $11 in cash as shown below:

However, even if you’re not in the scheme, you can still be eligible for the $9,000 help package as long as you fulfil this criteria:

• Started work as a self-employed person on or before 25 March 2020
• Do not also earn income as an employee
• Earn a Net Trade Income of no more than $100,000
• Live in a property with an annual value of no more than $13,000 (this means how much yu can earn from rental of your property not the value of your property)
• Do not own two or more properties

If you’re married, your spouse cannot earn more than $70,000 a year. If not ask your spouse to help you instead of the Government lah.

If you’re above 37 years old and had filed your taxes for the work year 2018, and fulfil the above criteria, you’d automatically qualify as well.

Which’ll lead to 88,000 people.

But, but, but.

What if you’ve started driving PHV last year? Or you didn’t apply for Workfare Income Supplement Scheme before even when you’re eligible?

Fret not.

Self-Employed People Who Didn’t Qualify Automatically for $1K Per Month Help Can Appeal

It’s mentioned in the MOM website that “other eligible SEPs may apply for SIRS. More details on SIRS and the application process will be released at a later date.”

Josephine Teo, the Minister of Manpower, has come out to talk about this.

She understood that some self-employed people who didn’t automatically qualify for the SIRS would be worried.

I would, too, if I’m leaving $9,000 on the table.

For people who are qualified but aren’t automatically qualified for it (i.e. not in WIS or didn’t have tax returns), they can simply apply for it.

How about those people who’re borderline ineligible?

She said that they would look at the appeals for people who’re not qualified for these three group of people:

• People living in property with Annual Value that’s slightly higher than $13,000
• Have spouses who earn $70,000 but have many people to support in the household (that means cannot support just you lah)
• Have a regular part-time work that pays a salary

Having said that, your property agent friend who often accidentally shows the logo of his BMW logo while snapping an image of his Starbucks drink still cannot get the $9,000 that’s catered just for the needy and not for the millionaire who works 4 hours a day.

So if you’ve a friend who’s self-employed and is eligible for this help, or could appeal for the help, do tell him or her about this!

More details about this will, however, be revealed at a later date.