Housing Benefit confusion.

samwich1979

uganda wrote: »

Ok, state the gross income and list all the deductions on your payslip and the amounts and I'll try and see how they have come to their figure.

A months pay with no deduction's is £2056.53.

Deduction's:

PAYE: £260.00

NI: £148.71

Pension: £133.67

Unison:14.00

That is everything on my payslip!

iwilldoitthistime

the difference is your union contribution. They will not take this into account as a deduction as it is not mandatory.

uganda

samwich1979 wrote: »

A months pay with no deduction's is £2056.53.

Deduction's:

PAYE: £260.00

NI: £148.71

Pension: £133.67

Unison:14.00

That is everything on my payslip!

Ok, all the tax and NI come off. Half the pension comes off. The union fees stay on, I'm afraid.

Hence, your earnings are £2056.53 - £260.00 - £148.71 - £66.84. This comes out at £1580.98, which translates to a weekly wage of £364.84. Take off the disregard of £27.10 and you have assessed earnings of £339.74pw. That's 5p out from what the authority put on your award letter, so presumably we have a little inaccuracy somewhere, but that is basically it and I'm afraid they are right. If your next payslip is lower, fetch it down so you get a higher entitlement and if it's higher, fetch it down so you don't get hit with an overpayment later.

Mara69

If you are struggling so much at the moment, freeze your pension. Once things ease a bit and your husband is back at work you can restart it.

samwich1979

Mara69 wrote: »

If you are struggling so much at the moment, freeze your pension. Once things ease a bit and your husband is back at work you can restart it.

Freezing my pension is not an option as i work for the NHS and as you may have seen on the tv recently we are going to be forced to work until we are 68 as it is.
So a break in paying this will delay my retirement even further as i need to get 40 years of payments in, which i will have done by the age of 59.
Also as my husband doesn't work at the moment and has never paid into a pension i need this for us both to live comfortably in our old age, these days you have to think about things like this way before you actually retire.

Jobs are not coming up very often in our area at the moment and the ones that do require specific qualifications which my husband doesn't have, so a break in my pension could last a very long time and i just cannot do it.

I am going to contact HRMC about CTC and apply for it asap as this is £13.50 per week extra for us.

samwich1979

uganda wrote: »

Ok, all the tax and NI come off. Half the pension comes off. The union fees stay on, I'm afraid.

Hence, your earnings are £2056.53 - £260.00 - £148.71 - £66.84. This comes out at £1580.98, which translates to a weekly wage of £364.84. Take off the disregard of £27.10 and you have assessed earnings of £339.74pw. That's 5p out from what the authority put on your award letter, so presumably we have a little inaccuracy somewhere, but that is basically it and I'm afraid they are right. If your next payslip is lower, fetch it down so you get a higher entitlement and if it's higher, fetch it down so you don't get hit with an overpayment later.

Thanks so much for all of your help, i have emailed the director of finance at the council and just asked him to clarify it for me too and make sure all is correct as i just dont want to be missing out on anything extra we should be getting.

Mara69

samwich1979 wrote: »

Freezing my pension is not an option as i work for the NHS and as you may have seen on the tv recently we are going to be forced to work until we are 68 as it is.
So a break in paying this will delay my retirement even further as i need to get 40 years of payments in, which i will have done by the age of 59.
Also as my husband doesn't work at the moment and has never paid into a pension i need this for us both to live comfortably in our old age, these days you have to think about things like this way before you actually retire.

Jobs are not coming up very often in our area at the moment and the ones that do require specific qualifications which my husband doesn't have, so a break in my pension could last a very long time and i just cannot do it.

I am going to contact HRMC about CTC and apply for it asap as this is £13.50 per week extra for us.

Fair enough, that is your choice. Personally, I would rather survive now than potentially in 20 - 40 years time. Who knows? Your pension might be worth nothing by then anyway.

uganda

samwich1979 wrote: »

Thanks so much for all of your help, i have emailed the director of finance at the council and just asked him to clarify it for me too and make sure all is correct as i just dont want to be missing out on anything extra we should be getting.

No problem, you are very welcome. Do remember though that your CTC will take you out of HB entitlement altogether, so only budget for £8.52 of it!

Good luck!

fluffymovie

Only half of your pension contribution is disregarded so although you may pay £30 towards it, we only ignore 50% which is where I think the difference has come from