Maternity Allowance Self Employed

supermonkey

Me & my OH are self employed. My self employment brings in the most money & OH also does small amount of work for me & has a small earnings certificate.

If in the future, we were to have a child, I understand with the small earnings exemption certificate maternity allowance would be £27 per week. There is also the option to just continue working throughout. This seems like the better option as if claiming maternity allowance I would have stop paying OH the wage (eg we would not actually be £27 a week better due to paying more tax). Lastly, we could cancel the certificate, repay the NI & get full allowance. The MA1 form (see link below) states that if you pay NI you will get the standard amount of £124.88. It looks like £12.60 per week to repay the NI (so £327.60!)

Thanks

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/advisers/claimforms/ma1_print.pdf

supermonkey

bump! bump!

Charlie1978

NI Class 2 Contributions are only £2.60 (odd) a week.

Basically - I paid from Jul09 - Jan 11 and it cost me £200 or thereabouts. This then covered me for MA.

I justified in paying it rather than getting the exemption certificate because in 2 weeks of MA I would have my £200 back. Then there is the gain of the other 37 weeks. I was advised to do this by the woman on the MA helpline so they are fully aware and advising people to pay their Class 2 contributions.

Not sure where £12 a week has come from unless there are backdated payments??? But I 'think' you need to cover 13 weeks of payments in your 26 week test period. Or something like that. HMRC website will be able to tell you the exact amount.

supermonkey

Thanks, I will call them as it isn't clear from the website.

dll

Sorry to dig up this thread again....was just curious about maternity allowance too. If you're paying your national insurance contributions of £2.60 a week or whatever it is for 26 weeks out of the 66 weeks preceding your due date, and you earn an average of £30/wk over your top 13 weeks of salary, are you automatically entitled to £128/week maternity allowance or is it banded in any way based on your salary?

Charlie 1978 - it wasn't clear from your post- have you been working during that time period or just registered as self-employed during that time, because if so, isn't there NI on the earnings too?

stazi

A woman paying 26 Class 2 NIC conts in the test period of 66 weeks will give her the max MA entitlement.

abby1234519

Ok well what if you are registered self employed (as I have apparently been for 3 years) and am starting a little bit of self employment next week. Ie actually doing some paid work.

I've worked at least 20 weeks as employed (I have the payslips) could I then go pay another 11 class 2s so then I've "worked" 26 weeks?

I know that sounds odd because technically you could register as self employed and pay a bundle. I just wondered if I pay £2.60 per week from now untill the end of my test period would I be entitled or not. Just annoyed that I haven't made the full 26 weeks. I did one week of self employed work actually in November, but I didn't pay any class 2s because my income was low and I was told not to bother.