JSA and self employment

burnoutbabe

I'm about to be made redundant and will be claiming JSA (contributions based only)

but i also have a self employed job as a mystery shopper. I get offered jobs and some weeks i do 3 which takes 3 hours and other weeks none.

Some jobs pay £5 fee, others pay nothing (free meal).

When i do my tax return, i'd declare £5 less the travel costs to get to those jobs.

So i know if you earn over £5 a week, they deduct it from your JSA but do you declare your income each week and they alter the cheque/payment?

do i declare the taxable profits or the gross fee? if i don't do more than 16 hours at it, i assume its all okay?

Horseunderwater

burnoutbabe wrote: »

I'm about to be made redundant and will be claiming JSA (contributions based only)

but i also have a self employed job as a mystery shopper. I get offered jobs and some weeks i do 3 which takes 3 hours and other weeks none.

Some jobs pay £5 fee, others pay nothing (free meal).

When i do my tax return, i'd declare £5 less the travel costs to get to those jobs.

So i know if you earn over £5 a week, they deduct it from your JSA but do you declare your income each week and they alter the cheque/payment?

do i declare the taxable profits or the gross fee? if i don't do more than 16 hours at it, i assume its all okay?

Hello there
Having been in this situation twice now, You can work 15.59 mins without it affecting the JSA.
What you earn as a self employed person is in this case I would say that you are making an actual loss and that you'd be better off not doing a mystery shop, unless you can get to these places without using a car or bus or taxi. £5 for an hours work is below min wage as well and if they are paying you, you are employed, not self employed, I'd check with inland revenue for their definition on that. There may be a proper definition in their rules that covers this specifically.
If you have redundancy money, there will a delay in you getting any JSA as well.
You do not state your age: There are 3 bands for statutory gov't min redunancy payments. Go to the direct gov site and look up redundancy and JSA rules. You'll also find a link to the revenue on there. To get redundancy, you have to have worked for someone for 2 years before it is due and you need to know your weekly gross pay and there is a calculator in the calculate what you should get minimum bit on the site I mentioned. You input age, years worked and weekly gross pay and it tells you how much the minimum should be. Some employers may not be able to pay this due to lack of funds, so you have to claim it by writing to them in formal way and waiting for answer from them. Then you fill out a form and use that to get government to pay it to you.
Hope this helps a tad.
Frances.

getmore4less

Horseunderwater wrote: »

If you have redundancy money, there will a delay in you getting any JSA as well.

Contributions JSA is claimable as soon as you are terminated..

burnoutbabe

thanks

with the "making a loss", yes lots of mystery shopping jobs do appear to on paper, but its paying for my travel to place XYZ and gets me out of the house and a free coffee. So overall a benefit to me. yes, its less than min wage but i'm self emploeyd so that doesn't apply to SE people.

What does the 16 mins mean? isn't it 16 hours?

in terms of my redundancy, i'll be getting 6 months salary paid out what with PILON and holiday pay etc.