Tax Credits - Is this right?

nikki2804

TBH the best thing to do would be to contact the tax credits helpline on 0845 300 3900, they will take all your income information and give you and estimate. Savings are taken in to account in some cases (i.e if it generates additional income over £300) and redundancy pay is also taken into account over a certain level (been a while since i dealt with it so i cant remember the exact amount im afraid)

You wont know the exact amount you would receive until the application is fully processed and an award notice is issued.

Voyager2002

flea72 wrote: »

did i say it was a criminal matter? But when most people get redundancy, their first thought is to pay off the mortgage as they see it as their biggest expense, and also they want to maintain the roof over their head. They dont consider the consequences of doing so, where benefits are concerned

Paying off a mortgage with redundancy, is classed as deprivation of capital, as redundancy pay is supposed to be money to tide you over until you find other employment, not used for buying a house. You can use the redundancy money to meet your monthly mortgage payments, but if you use it as a lump sum to reduce the capital, then the benefits office, take a dim view of it

I just wanted to warn the OP, so they could consider their options. With redundancy there are so many things going on at once, and your life is practically thrown up in the air, that sometimes you dont think of the bigger picture

Flea

Fair enough.

Your phrase "a big no-no" might have given the impression that paying off the mortgage would be against the law, although that was not what you meant. And since this family has a second salary coming in, I don't think they are likely to get means-tested benefits like income-based JSA anyway. So using redundancy money to pay off the mortgage might actually be sensible for them (depending on what interest rate they pay at the moment).

Ex-Spendaholic

Thanks for all the replies. :beer:

We will be paying off the mortgage. If we don't we would end up frittering the money away so its best to pay the mortgage off. The rest will go into savings with the intention of helping the 3 kids out when they get older. The only frivilous spending from it will be on a new stair carpet and garden wall. :rotfl:

We hadn't intended to look at JSA or anything like that, as far as I'm concerned I'm still earning and we are not in a dire situation by any means. To put things in perspective we have both always worked since the day and hour we left school. We don't intend for things to be any different now. OH will be getting a new job ASAP otherwise he'll find himself under the patio. :rotfl:

I was just really looking at Tax Credits as a short-term top up to my salary in between the OH's jobs. Believe me I know we will be in a really good situation here as my salary is good for just working 3 days, we won't have a mortgage and we will have savings. However as we have never had a penny in our lives from the government (apart from child benefit obviously) and have paid our taxes (higher rate for OH) I feel no shame in claiming a bit of tax credit as a temporary measure.

On the subject of NI contributions, we would like to pay those for him in the interim period between leaving work and finding a new job. How do we go about this and is it a set amount?

TotallyBroke

Your OH can pay his stamp voluntarily, He will not have to sign onto do this. So if you are not looking for him to go on benefits he does not have to.
Just ring up your local Tax Office and tell them you would like to pay your voluntary contributions. Then his (possible) state pension or any other benefits will not be affected.