Universal credit and self employment

Sunshine78

Hi,
Long story short..
My partner is long term sick, we were getting esa (support group), housing benefit, pip (standard and mobility) and child tax credits and child benefit. I am his carer.
We have recently moved area which has obviously triggered a universal credit claim, that has all finally gone through now. I have a question for the future really...
I am thinking about trying to sell items I can make online from home... how would I go about this and what effect could it have on our uc?
Going out to work isn't an option as my partners condition is unpredictable and we have a son, so I need to be here with him but don't want to be solely reliant on uc if we don't have to be. Would I start off then notify HMRC and uc etc or notify them of my idea first?
Sorry if these are stupid questions.
Thanks

Spoonie_Turtle

I don't know how it works with UC, but I do know that for HMRC you can have a trading allowance of £1000 in a year - if you make less than this you don't need to file a tax return, and under certain circumstances you don't even have to register with them (but of course you need to keep good records anyway to prove you've not made more than £1000).
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tax-free-allowances-on-property-and-trading-income
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tax-free-allowances-on-property-and-trading-income#insa

If you're doing it for a bit of income though I guess you'd be hoping to make a bit more than that! But you don't have to worry about registering straight away, which gives you a bit of leeway to see how it goes without the hassle of registering with HMRC in case you end up not needing to.

If your gross income for a tax year is more than £1,000, you must register for Self Assessment by 5 October in the following tax year.

tomtom256

You would discuss this with an enhanced work coach (self employed trained) and they would explain it all to you.

You would probably be found not gainfullly self employed and would have to report any income and expenditure monthly. However if you are a carer and get the carers premium, you would/should be in the no work related requirements regime anyway, so wouldn't really have much affect on your claim.

You would also have an earnings disregard that would ignore so much of any income before it affected your payments as well.

NedS

tomtom256 wrote: »

You would discuss this with an enhanced work coach (self employed trained) and they would explain it all to you.

You would probably be found not gainfullly self employed and would have to report any income and expenditure monthly. However if you are a carer and get the carers premium, you would/should be in the no work related requirements regime anyway, so wouldn't really have much affect on your claim.

You would also have an earnings disregard that would ignore so much of any income before it affected your payments as well.

Correct. If you are a carer then you can not be found gainfully self employed on UC as there would be no requirements for you to look for work. This means, as a self employed person, you would simply report your self employed earnings each month and any earnings after expenses from your self employment will be taken into account in the normal way, the same as PAYE employed earnings would be from a regular job. The only difference here is that you would be required to report those earnings monthly.

As tomtom256 said, book an appointment with your work coach and they can explain everything to you in more detail.