Changes to Tax Credits from April 2012

smithyjules

Hi all,

I recieved a letter a while back saying that from April 2012 you had to work 24 hours per week now to recieve WTC, I work 22 hours and one 6 hour Saturday per month. I really don't think I will be able to increase my hours as the wage budget is at the max already. However I can't see how we will managed with the WTC being removed. We are not in a position as a family for me to work full-time as my Hubby is at Uni and we have two children under 5, one of which is under 2 and I really don't want hiom in Nursery full-time yet. I'm just not sure where to go from here. Anyone else in a similar situation?

Oldernotwiser

Can't your husband pick up a few hours' work somewhere? Most university students work part time and the 24 hours doesn't have to all be done by the same person.

smithyjules

To be honest thats not really a possiblity I don't think. We live in a village, our son is at nursery in a neighbouring village and our daughter at school in another, neither of which I can get to by bus (I don't drive), my Hubby leaves the house 4 days a week with our youngest in tow at 7.15, returning at 5 as Uni is a fair few mile away. The week days are like a military operation to get everyone where they need to be, at present my job fits in well with School and Hubby's Uni commitments (thank goodness!). Hubby is upstairs studying every night after the kids are in bed and a lot of the weekend too.

I will take the letter into work and see what I can work out.

paddedjohn

cant he or yourself get a couple of hours on a sunday somewhere?

EycplUK

Dont know if this would help , may be worth checking out ?
O/h could get some Home work style employment for a few hours each week , would that count as work hours ?
I do not mean envelope stuffing type work but maybe freelance type stuff ? its still work !
Hope you get on ok !

doodoot

OP, I was told by HMRC that you need to add up your total hours over 4 weeks and divide by 4 to get your mean number - this was when I was doing 14 hours one week then 19/20 the week after.

Having done yours quoted above, you are short by just 30 mins per month!

Ask at work if you could possible add an extra 10 mins per shift, or perhaps your OH could register as self-employed and sell stuff on eBay?

He could easily waste an hour or so each week listing and posting stuff out.

Don't worry that you will have to stop claiming, there is always a way around things.

paddedjohn

doodoot wrote: »

OP, I was told by HMRC that you need to add up your total hours over 4 weeks and divide by 4 to get your mean number - this was when I was doing 14 hours one week then 19/20 the week after.

Having done yours quoted above, you are short by just 30 mins per month!

Ask at work if you could possible add an extra 10 mins per shift, or perhaps your OH could register as self-employed and sell stuff on eBay?

He could easily waste an hour or so each week listing and posting stuff out.

Don't worry that you will have to stop claiming, there is always a way around things.

I think yu mean 30 mins per week;)

Oldernotwiser

smithyjules wrote: »

To be honest thats not really a possiblity I don't think. We live in a village, our son is at nursery in a neighbouring village and our daughter at school in another, neither of which I can get to by bus (I don't drive), my Hubby leaves the house 4 days a week with our youngest in tow at 7.15, returning at 5 as Uni is a fair few mile away. The week days are like a military operation to get everyone where they need to be, at present my job fits in well with School and Hubby's Uni commitments (thank goodness!). Hubby is upstairs studying every night after the kids are in bed and a lot of the weekend too.

I will take the letter into work and see what I can work out.

Surely that leaves 3 days when he isn't at university, the time he's free when he's there and every evening. There must be a couple of hours he's free to do some gardening or for you to do a morning's cleaning (apologies for being stereotypical!)

As I said earlier, many students work part time and some even work full time whilst doing a degree. That's obviously not desirable but 2 hours isn't going to make any difference to his results. You need to look at solutions rather than being negative to everything.

vhodgson

I understand your position entirely Smithyjules. We are in the same positon. I work 3 days in a school and my partners at uni. He attends uni 5 days a week with 4 hours travelling each day and studying all the time. When we planned a baby the rules were that I needed to work a minimum of 16 hours (I had always worked full time before). We worked out we could afford for me to work 16 hours a week and now they have changed the rule which means as of april we lose our working tax credit. Schools pay their staff through funding, I cannot get more hours now until possibly september and I didn't have a baby to give her to someone else to look after 5 days a week.

eadieb

There are people out there who run very small self employed businesses selling on ebay. At the moment, you dont have to be making a big profit but you would have to be spending the necessary hours each week on your business. e.g 2 hours are easily taken up with sourcing items to sell, preparing, photographing typing up the listing etc. Not sure how the professional sellers charges are different on ebay to other sellers and you would need to be official self employed, keeping accounts, declared to tax office and ni etc. this would be an initial pain but once set up the book keeping wouldn't be too bad if it was all at a low level. I only became aware of this recently when trying to look into the changes the new universal credit will make when it is introduced in 2013 and one of them is that they are going to make people who are self employed be assessed on a minimum wage for the hours they state as apparently there are plenty of people at the moment saying they are spending 30 hours a week selling on ebay and only making about £20 pw profit!

Rustic_Ron

This government want sacking!!! Do they realise they are hitting the most vunerable working people in the Uk.... I thought they wanted people in work but with stunts like moving the wtc goal posts they will force more people back into benefits!...