End of self-employed contract - would I get any benefits?

elljay

Dear all, (I'm not sure if this goes into the jobs or benefits section so someone please move it if it's wrong!)
I'm 57 and working (very) part time for an employer and earn around £150 per month from that job but the bulk of my money (£900 per month) is from a self-employed contract. Obviously I pay NI and tax out of that. I also receive £300 a month from a pension from a previous job.

It's likely that the contract will end at Christmas or at least, drop down to around £200 or less a month. It's going to be really hard to find another one and I'll be looking for a job as an employee probably. However I was wondering whether I might be entitled to any benefits while looking or how the various agencies would view this. I will be able to claim state pension in about 3 and a half years time. I have savings of around £1k only.

I'm not sure if I'm using the right terminology as I tend to think of benefits as everything you can get from a range of agencies but think that others might mean just jobseekers or something. I've never had to claim anything like any of these things before and the more I read up the more I get confused. I'd dearly love not to work so many hours so I could do more with my children/grandchildren and so on and if I could just get my income up to about £850 net per month I could get by. I'm on my own and rent my house.

Would be very grateful for any help, I'd like to be armed with enough information to ask the right questions before going to any of the agencies. Thanks
Liz

Conor_3

You will only be entitled to JSA if you were to completely end being self employed - i.e you phoned HMRC and told them you were finishing S/E completely.

You WOULD be entitled to Income Support if your income was low enough BUT you would be entitled to Working Tax Credits and that's the avenue I'd be looking at pursuing. In addition to that, housing and council tax benefits would be payable if your income was low enough.

elljay

AAh, I see, thank you Conor

I put proposed income etc into the 'entitled to' website but it only came up with housing allowance, no mention of tax credits etc. It also asks whether you're getting jsa or not, and as I didn't know whether I'd be entitled to that or not I couldn't really get much joy so I'm very grateful to you for showing me other avenues to look at. Is there any other website that might help me assess what I might be able to claim?

As this is the only self-employment I have I'd gladly give up the status, but I might still be earning a bit from it (basically my paid work will be taken over by volunteers so I'll need to be around to help a bit, but not much) so I'm stuck with that. I'll explore the tax credits thing though, so thank you. Liz

Editing to say I've just checked the working tax credit and don't think I'd qualify, you have to be responsible for childcare, or disabled, or returning after receiving benefits or working more than 30 hours, none of which will be me. Thanks anyway, Liz