Losing money/value with the Seiss grant !

Liflow

Hi all. I have been on a mission to optimise my Seiss grant money income/universal credit but cannot get any clear answers from Universal credit. For the first two grants I saved the money thinking I needed to become judicious with my spending. Then my universal payment went from £800 ISH pounds to zero. 

My second grant also deminised my next universal credit payment by about 600£. So I have lost 1400£ value with the first two grants. 

Then I thought that if instead of saving the grant, I spent every penny of the grant money on my self employed business I may be able get a full payment for my Universal, and hence save myself from losing my whole  universal credit payment. But I am afraid of doing this without information of how the grant money is processed by universal credit. If they process it simply as income like any other income then I should get the full universal credit payment. If it is classified as some other type of income that is not offset by business expenses, I may be in a position of not being able to pay rent when they take away my next universal payment.

I recognize that this is confusing. But I don't know how else to explain it. 

Thanks for reading this.🙏

Yahoo_Mail

Where you spend the grant has no impact on your UC entitlement, that is based on money received (other than UC.)

There is no way to avoid not getting your UC for the month the grant is paid as far as I'm aware.

Grumpy_chap

Are you on UC normally, or just because your income has fallen because of COVID?
What level of SEISS did you receive at each grant?
Are you still doing any paid work?  
The essence behind SEISS and CJRS was to avoid a huge number of new UC / JSA claims, though that won't be achieved in every case.

Icequeen1

Liflow said:

Hi all. I have been on a mission to optimise my Seiss grant money income/universal credit but cannot get any clear answers from Universal credit. For the first two grants I saved the money thinking I needed to become judicious with my spending. Then my universal payment went from £800 ISH pounds to zero. 

My second grant also deminised my next universal credit payment by about 600£. So I have lost 1400£ value with the first two grants. 

Then I thought that if instead of saving the grant, I spent every penny of the grant money on my self employed business I may be able get a full payment for my Universal, and hence save myself from losing my whole  universal credit payment. But I am afraid of doing this without information of how the grant money is processed by universal credit. If they process it simply as income like any other income then I should get the full universal credit payment. If it is classified as some other type of income that is not offset by business expenses, I may be in a position of not being able to pay rent when they take away my next universal payment.

I recognize that this is confusing. But I don't know how else to explain it. 

Thanks for reading this.🙏

The SEISS grant is treated as self-employed income, so yes it can be offset by self-employed expenses. But they have to be expenses you have actually incurred so i'm not sure it would benefit you overrall. 

calcotti

Yahoo_Mail said:

Where you spend the grant has no impact on your UC entitlement, that is based on money received (other than UC.)

There is no way to avoid not getting your UC for the month the grant is paid as far as I'm aware.

That is not correct.
The SEISS is self employed income. If the self employed outgoings match the income then the earnings taken into account for the UC calculation are NIL.

calcotti

OP. SEISS is report as self employed income at the end of the assessment period in which you receive it. At the same time you will be reporting self employed expenses in the normal way. For UC the earnings taken into account are the difference between the two figures. Therefore if you have expenses you need to pay but have some discretion over when to pay them you can choose to pay them in the AP in which the SEISS is received and this will help reduce your earnings taken into account. 
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/universal-credit-and-self-employment-quick-guide/how-to-report-your-earnings-from-self-employment

You can apply for the Self-employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS). This provides a grant to self-employed individuals or partnerships, worth 80% of their profits up to a cap of £2,500 per month.
If you get this grant, you must report this in the ‘Report income and expenses’ to-do.

Grumpy_chap

From a practical perspective, it may be likely that someone only has self-employed expenses if they also have self-employed income in addition to the SEISS???

calcotti

Grumpy_chap said:

From a practical perspective, it may be likely that someone only has self-employed expenses if they also have self-employed income in addition to the SEISS???

Not necessarily. Income tax liability from previous income springs to mind along with ongoing insurance payments, rent or lease payments, etc. even if not working. However many people receiving SEISS are working so may also have current expenditure on petrol, materials etc (depending on the nature of their business). Something as simple as choosing to fill the van up with petrol a couple of days early so that the expense is in the same AP as the SEISS would reduce the amount taken into account for UC in that AP.