Help needed with a JSA Claim!!!???

lea2012

Hi,

I could really do with some advice. I finished my job early may as I was on a casual contract within a school and they no longer had any work for me. They advised me I could come back at the end of August and as I have a young child I wasn't sure whether or not I would find another job for a couple of months that would fit in with her childcare.

On the advise of a colleague I put in a claim for Job Seekers Allowance whilst looking for other work. As I am married and my partner works I was told I needed to claim contributions based jsa. This was on the 28th May.

I was unable to work for 2 weeks in june as I was recovering from an operation and since then I have been unable to find any suitable work that fits in with childcare and is only temporory as I intend to return to the school in a few weeks.

So I awaited my response from the job centre and was surprised when they replied and said I was unable to work due to not having paid enough NI contributions. When I queried this they said I didnt pay enoug in the tax year 2005 / 2006.

In that year I worked for a large british travel company abroad as a rep but was paid through the bank and assumed they were paying my NI contributions as our actual salary was too low to pay anything from it. I also worked full time when I came home in the winter and was only out of work for about 6 weeks in total when I didnt claim anything as I was just in between jobs.

The job centre have asked me to prove I was working and paying tax so I sent them all my P45'S. They said that this is not enough and that I need a P60 however as I was in between work at the end of the tax year I had no employer to give me a p60 and wasn't issued with one from the tax office.

the job centre have basically said this is tough and that I cant get anything. I am getting really frustrated as I have never claimed anything before and feel taht this is against me as I dont know all the ins and outs of things!! We are struggling to get by on my husbands wages and the tax credits we get and really need some help.

I have contacted the tax office who will send me something but it could take 10 weeks by which time I wil be back at work! Can I still claim this money for the last few months once I am back at work? I still have to sign on every 2 weeks and my case is still open until I get some evidence.

Can anyone help me before I tear my hair out!!!

dmg24

How long were you working overseas, and approx how much were you earning? If your salary is too low, you just don't pay any NI, your employer would not pay it for you.

Can you provide a rough breakdown of what you were doing for the year?

lea2012

yeah sure here goes:

april 2005 - nov 2005- working overseas.The way we were paid and appeared on wage slip was £120 salary taxable and £280 living expenses. total £400.

nov 05- dec 05- working full time in supermarket. approx earnings £1400. before tax

jan 06 - no job but not claiming anything.

feb-mar 06 - workin in leisure complex earnings approx £1300 before tax.

mid april 06 - recommenced overseas employment.

what i dont understand is that my contributions for 2006 are fine and that i have paid or been paid on my behalf for the overseas work that i did then. I was led to believe that my overseas company paid my NI on my behalf as they took £30 a month from my wages to cover any taxes, which went into a tax fund. At the end of the season they paid any tax owed and what was left was given back to you. They took £40 out of my tax fund to pay some form of tax and gave me the rest back.

I did not work for a cowboy company this was one of top 3 big companies and has now been taken over to be part of the biggest british travel company. Many other rep colleagues have been able to claim but i havent.

dmg24

What period was the £120 for - a week or a month?

lea2012

A month! Our overall wages were £420 a month this was paid as £140 salary (sorry i thought it was £120 until I just checked my wage slips) and £280 living allowance. They then took £30 a month every month off for a tax fund, which as I say you paid your tax from at the end of the season and then got the rest back. This was due to the fact that you could earn commision in resort and it was paid weekly in resort, at a varied amount, so they kept a record of this and then worked out what your total earnings were for the season inc commission so you would pay the correct amount of tax, supposedly!

I dont know why it was done this way it just was and at the time I wasn't bothered as I got £390 in my bank each month which was my wage and occasionaly got commision which was never more than a £10-£20 a week if I was lucky.

I did recieve a letter from the HMRC this morning which states that my:
Total pay = £3558
Tax = £215.26.

It doesn't say though what my NI contributions were. I contacted the job centre and they said send it anyway as it might be useful and they may be able to work it out from that. But I still dont know if I will have paid enough NI contributions as I dont know how much you are meant to pay in order to get it?

dmg24

If you were only officially earning £140 per month you would not be paying NI Contributions. It looks like your employer made the pay structure like this so that you did not have to pay NI, and therefore, nor did they!

My friend also did repping until approx four years ago, and I recall that she was not entitled to JSA for the same reason.

I could be wrong on this, I am just applying my friend's experience. Hopefully someone will be able to expand further x

Oldernotwiser

For the current tax year, the level at which you pay NI is £90 per week. Although it will have been lower in 2005/6 it seems unlikely that you have paid it for the period when you were abroad. As well as this you weren't working or signing on for a month at the start of 2006 so you'll have no contributions for that month either. Given that you were on a low wage when you were working in the UK, it looks unlikely that your NI payments will have gone over the threshold for that year.

I'm sorry to say that it's not looking good for your claim but it will still be worth signing on so that you get your contributions paid for this summer.

lea2012

Thanks for all your help. Its just really frustrating as no one at the job centre seems to be able to give me any clear advice! 2 days on here and I seem to have an answer!!

If they had told me what the threshold is for NI contributions I would have known from the beginning that this was a dead end and would have just give up and tried to budget better!! As it was they told me it should be no problem and we had a hol booked for early june and went on it and spent a bit much thinking we would get some help when we got back but didn't!

Its also rather frustrating that when I applied originally I was having a temporary seperation from my husband and they said I would get income based but now we are back together we get nothing, its like punishment for staying married and making it work!

roll on next month when I can get back to work at earn some more money!

robbiet27

The letter told you that you had not paid enough NI contributions and when you rang you were asked to provide P60s for the relevant years so that your claim could be reassessed.

JSA Contributory is based on the NI contributions you have paid in the 2 tax years preceding the year of claim, i.e. 2005/06 + 2006/07, in your case.

susiee54

Hi, this is my first post and I'm still trying to navigate this site. I have an additional question, I have also been out of work for a while and have been trying to claim JSA. I was told that I had to claim for contribution based JSA but when I went to sign on today I was told that as I was not employed during 2005/2006 I am entitled to nothing! I was self employed for a while, but didn't earn very much at all during 05/06. If I pay a years back NI contributions for that year will it mean that I can claim benefit? BTW, I'm nearly 59 and my pension forecast shows that I've paid enough years to get a pension?

thanks for your help, Susiee

milliebear00001

It doesn't work like that I'm afraid! You can't claim contributions based JSA, but can you claim income based? Are you married? What income and savings do you have?