UC and work bonus

Steph86cf

Hi, I can’t seem to find any helpful advice online and wonder if anyone can help! I started a new job and switched to UC a few months ago, all going well so far. However, next year we will receive an annual bonus and I can’t work out how this will affect my UC claim. It won’t be a massive amount but I understand I won’t receive UC that month but will it revert to normal the next month or will I need to reapply?
Thank you in advance!

calcotti

If there is a NIL assessment period your claim is closed but your journal remains accessible. You then need to log in to the journal and reactivate the claim. Your UC claim then resumes with the same assessment period dates as before.

However if your bonus is large you may have ‘surplus earnings’ which will be carried forward and taken into account in the next assessment period which would therefore reduce your UC in that period too. It is also possible for surplus earnings to take more than one assessment period to be extinguished - depending on the size of the bonus. These rules prevent gaming of the system but are complicated. There is more detail here https://revenuebenefits.org.uk/universal-credit/guidance/entitlement-to-uc/self-employment/surplus-earnings-and-losses/.