Housing Benefit - Reporting occasional income

BaldEagle

I receive HB and was wondering if anyone can advise what the situation is regarding reporting occasional income?

As a bit of background, I used to have both PAYE and SE income which was used to calculate my entitlement. Due to the economic downturn a few years back, my SE earnings dropped dramatically and I advised the LA of this and it took them 5 months to apply the changes. This happened again when my major client advised it was highly unlikely that they'd be using my services so I provided LA with this information along with projected earnings. This time it took 6 months for the change to be applied.

Frustrated at how long this took and knowing that I had no work in the pipeline and that any income would be swallowed up by expenses, I advised them that I was no longer actively SE and to only use my PAYE income.

However, out of the blue, former client offered me some work. As a result, having just completed my tax return, I made a profit. Without that client work, I would have made a loss for the last tax year.

Now before anyone jumps on me, it has always been my intention to declare this income. As I understand it, they have a data share agreement with HMRC so when I filed my tax return, they would have been advised anyway.

My guess is that I probably should have declared this at the time I received the money but my reasons for not doing so were that these genuinely were one-off payments. All the rest of my circumstances were exactly the same so I didn't want my HB to be assessed based on this being regular income and spending another 6 months arguing the case.

Surely there has to be something in place to report one-off payments.

dippy3103

Write them a letter saying exactly that.

Yes you should have reported the change at the time- but I get why you didn't.

BaldEagle

Thanks, dippy. I've put together a rather lengthy letter explaining the situation and will be dropping it off along with pay slips, P60, bank statements, etc in the next couple of days. I just hope that they understand my reasoning and don't think I've tried to defraud them.

This has all come to a head because it's taken them 9 months to deal with another query I had with them. It's maddening that when I advise my income has increased, my HB is reduced within 7 days but when it's the other way round, it takes months.

Wonder if I can get an emergency grant to pay for the printer ink for this lengthy tome...

wannabehermit

We are both in jobs where our hours and therefore our income changes each month so we have been supplying our wage slips to the HB office to be assessed on an "average reassessment" every quarter. It took me a long time to find out about this, and it was only by chance that one time the person who took my call was really helpful and was aware of this. Many of them (certainly at my LA) are either not aware or are unwilling to share this information. Try writing to your HB officer explaining your situation and that occasionally you will have one off payments and could you have your claim as an average reassessment. This means that when your income does vary it is calculated immediately and there will be no suspensions.