Working Tax Credits helpp

bargainhunter90

Hello

I receive WTC and have recently become self employed. I notified them within a month and they have 2 months later requested further information.

I don't want to jeopardize my entitlement. I will of course only tell them the truth on their questions. I'm also employed full time for 35 hours a week. I would appreciate a little bit of help as I don't want to fill it in and find out later I should have put something else.

INTRO
My self employment has random hours and are whenever I fancy working, which is when I'm able to as I need the extra money. I work online and set up and change websites for various companies through my contacts I've made. I also do some photography work and photoshop things too. The income for this tax year is likely to be around 1,000.


Questions
1) Start Date - I can manage that one:)
2) Total Hours worked - I have no idea it's from 5 hours a week to 30 hours a week.
3) UTR Number - What's one of them? I registered online as self employed and so far have had the auto reply e-mail.

They also asked for my phone number. I'm not comfortable with receiving calls from them mainly because it's taking away my earning time and prefer it all in writing. Can I just leave that alone?

Please help thank you

Elaine_Wilson

I shouldn't worry too much about the hours worked. They are only really interested in making sure you work 30 or more hours a week. This is covered by your employment. Just take reasonable guess for the moment. You will have the opportunity to change this when you complete the annual review.

UTR is a Unique Taxpayer Reference. This will be issued to you when your resistration as self employed is effected. It is a ten digit number.

I dont think you have to provide a telephone number but it could speed up a very simple enquiry. If I were in your position I would not provide it. But I stress that is a very personal view based on the fact that I have come across a number of cases where they seem to ignore information given verbally.

System

If you registered as self-employed 2 months ago I would have expected you to have received your UTR in the post by now. You can contact your tax office and confirm with them that your online registration has been successfull.

The UTR is required by TCO because at the end of the tax year they compare what you declare as your income on your annual declaration with what is held by HMRC for both your PAYE (under National Insurance number) and your SE incomes (under UTR).

As Elaine says the number of hours isn't too important as you will already be getting the 30hr element of WTC courtesy of your PAYE income. Give them an average figure.

You don't have to give them a telephone number if you don't want to especially since TCO correspond 99% of the time by letter. Lots of people on this site can verify that they have wasted time waiting on TCO to give them a callback.