Universal Credits - Self Employed

dktreesea

charlotte4940 wrote: »

he is only working 20 hours because that is all available! if there was more hours he would take them. Whats the alternative? going onto job seekers and start claiming housing benefit and council tax benefit!!

he pays national insurance but does not pay tax. Hes a roofer and doesn't work dead on 20 hours per week its an average one month he could earn £500 and the next month there could be no work in. if there is rain it means no work and if customers dont want to spend there is no income. he also has no expenditure so all his income is profit.

Since you work full time, you could nominate him as being the main carer for your child. This would mean he wouldn't be deemed to earn 35 hours per week at the NMW (i.e. the minimum income floor) because, being the main carer for the child, he wouldn't be required to work that much.

dktreesea

MissMoneypenny wrote: »

At least they will go on the work programmes and pay society back for their welfare payments; instead of just getting 23K welfare (in your example) a year and doing nothing for it.

It's not that the self employed people do nothing for their benefits. They may well both, as per my example, work 30+ hours a week.

But what happens with the benefits system as it currently stands is that it encourages self employed people to make irrational choices. A jeweller who could make £20k a year (say for example that's the going rate) instead decides to work form himself for £5k a year, because he likes working for himself AND due to being able to claim maximum benefits may even be marginally better off than if he had taken the £20k job.

In the absence of any benefits for the self employed, choosing to earn £5k a year (and try to support your family, particularly if your rent was £6k a year), instead of £20k a year would be irrational.

While I realise most people going for a job in a supermarket are unlikely to get one (recent news articles suggest applicants outstrip the number of available positions by a factor of 4 to 1), in terms of profitability, if you compare take home pay from a full time supermarket job with profits for many microbusinesses, the supermarket job is far more profitable.

dktreesea

lindseykim13 wrote: »

I'm mega confused by this, does it only affect those households where the only income is from SE?
My DH is a full time paye worker and i work part time SE, will i be affected by this change when it comes in? Are they forcing everyone into full time work or just one person in the household?
We only get child tc as i understand it this is moving to UC.

The answer to that is probably that it depends on the age of your children. Say, for instance, your youngest child was already 13. So, in that scenario, both parents would be expected to work full time. They would take your partner's PAYE income as his contribution, and, if you were self employed, take the higher of your income or the MIF (i.e. 35 hours per week at the NMW) as your contribution to household income, and then work out your UC entitlement based on that income.

If, however, your youngest child was only one, then the main carer for the child may not need to work at all.

holisticsaver

I'm trying to seek more clarification on deviations of the Minimum Income Threshold for self-employed lone-parents with children under the age of 13. From what I can understand the MIT is set at 35 X NMW unless the claimant meets the requirements for the lesser number of hours as per the UC Reg 88, Paragraph 2. (See below.) However no definition of lesser hours is given? The regulation implies that the claimant will have to satisfy the Secretary of State in meeting those requirements? How will that work?

Expected hours
88.—(1) The “expected number of hours per week” in relation to a claimant for the purposes of
determining their individual threshold in regulation 90 or for the purposes of regulation 95 or 97 is
35 unless some lesser number of hours applies under paragraph (2).
(2) The lesser number of hours is—
(a) where—
(i) the claimant is a relevant carer, a responsible carer or a responsible foster parent, and
(ii) the Secretary of State is satisfied that the claimant has reasonable prospects of
obtaining paid work,
the number of hours that the Secretary of State considers is compatible with those caring
responsibilities;
(b) where the claimant is a responsible carer for a child under the age of 13, the number of
hours that the Secretary of State considers is compatible with the child’s normal school
hours (including the normal time it takes the child to travel to and from school); or
(c) where the claimant has a physical or mental impairment, the number of hours that the
Secretary of State considers is reasonable in light of the impairment.

Does anyone know if these "lesser hours" have been defined as I have been unable to gain clarification on this?
Many thanks