Wanna wrote:
BUT, you had no running costs (looking at the SEISS grants) so you were probably no worse of after not buying fuel, tyres, servicing, etc AND you were sat at home...
Lets put it this way, were your costs down by not turning a wheel?
Slight oversimplification there
Can't speak for everyone, but:
SEISS only covers profits, so doesn't cover fixed costs, most obviously licensing and insurance for cab drivers. OK, there's maybe some scope for mothballing and avoiding these costs, but a year ago we all thought it would only last a few weeks. Then by summer we thought it was all over, so not good for long-term planning like mothballing.
And even if you did mothball, no certainty of an insurance refund, and presumably if you cancelled a policy and reinsured some time later it could affect NCB.
Likewise, you won't get a refund on a badge or plate, and not renewing for a period might mean additional costs if your repappliction was treated as a new grant rather than renewal. And if you're plated HC in a restricted area (like me) then you're effectively forced to renew even if your HC is effectively mothballed.
As for car running costs, it's certainly true that a significant proportion of that is mileage-dependent. But, and particularly on older cars, a lot of repairs are at least partly dependent on time, and would have to be done anyway, maybe because they're partly due to corrosion, metals weakening and rubbers perishing, and stuff like that. For example, I had to replace my seven-year old a battery a few weeks ago (£164, and my stop-start is working again
) Have also had a broken spring and other suspension problems in the last year, and also a wiring issue. All of which I suspect would have happened anyway, regardless of mileage.
Also, strictly I suspect most manufacturers specify at least a minor service every twelve months (VAG certainly does), so with MoT and car tax, you could easily be £300 down on just that without turning a wheel.
And, of course, if you've got a newish motor or a second-hand one on HP, you've got capital and interest repayments. And any payment holidays etc won't have covered the whole of lockdown.
And SEISS can be a double kick in the teeth if you've got a newish motor, because that's likely to have supressed your profits in the last couple of years, which in turn means lower SEISS payments
Then there's depreciation, which is partly dependent on age, and again affects those with newer motors worst.
Even after all those uncovered costs, at best SEISS only covers 80% of profits, or 70% for the second grant. And it didn't cover a couple of months at all. Some in the trade with a reasonable income from other sources have received nothing from SEISS, despite maybe normally getting almost half their income from the trade. And while it's maybe difficult to feel much sympathy for those in the trade declaring more than £50k per annum, if they have then they'll get nothing from SEISS either (someone running an office as a sole trader or in a partnership, maybe).
And while no doubt those who do things like eat in restaurants a lot or take a couple of foreign holidays a year will have saved on that, for those like me with a fairly basic lifestyle there's not a lot of spare flesh to cut out. (Don't want to sound like the victim, but in the year before lockdown my total electricity bills (no gas) came to not much more than £500, and think they'll be less than £500 for lockdown year despite mostly being at home 24 hours a day. Go figure
). So apart from giving up my TV licence and having a shower every other day rather than daily, and small potatoes like that, there's not really that much to cut back on, although I'm not quite claiming to be surviving on bread and water or relying on food banks. Yet
)
Of course, there are people a lot worse than me. For a start, *every* *badgeholder* in Scotland got an extra £1,500, with very little in the way of hoops to jump through. Some down south have got a lot less apart from SEISS, if anything at all.
And no doubt a small number in the trade have done quite well out of it all, particularly those with guaranteed school money or other contracts etc. But for the independents in our town like me who rely on the ranks, trade's effectively been wiped out for a year now, apart from a few weeks in late summer/early autumn, and even then it was pretty poor.
But apart from that...