Paid for equipment to work from home, employer reimburses through payslip, UC sees it as income.

dekaspace1

Is there a way I can sort this? Basically work paid for a desk, mouse, chair etc for myself that came to about £200 as I have health issues and its under their scheme to provide help to people working from home, they refunded me through payslip but DWP have counted this as my income so reduced my UC, so I end up paying for a large chunk of my equipment for myself!

Im confused on how this works.

pmlindyloo

dekaspace1 said:

Is there a way I can sort this? Basically work paid for a desk, mouse, chair etc for myself that came to about £200 as I have health issues and its under their scheme to provide help to people working from home, they refunded me through payslip but DWP have counted this as my income so reduced my UC, so I end up paying for a large chunk of my equipment for myself!

Im confused on how this works.

I believe that this money for your equipment is exempt from taxation and is excluded from being earnings for UC.

Read this:

ADM Chapter H3: Earned income - employed earnings (publishing.service.gov.uk)

H3108  (and particularly H3120.

Perhaps confirm this with the DWP through your UC journal and ask what steps your employer needs to take to correct their mistake - I am presuming it was put with your earnings and subject to tax?

MattMattMattUK

How was the amount shown on your payslip, was it shown as expenses/reimbursement or just an amount?

Gary1963

A friend has been reimbursed his rail fare. He has the same problem. Although clearly shown on the payslip UC treat as income.

huckster

May be the employers have entered  information incorrectly on the HMRC RTI system and Universal Credit are being involved in something which is none of their business.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been working from home and many would have had home office costs reimbursed. These payments have nothing to do with payroll and should not be entered on the payroll system.

Get your employers to correct the payroll information and RTI submission. It will then show on the DWP systems that there has been an alteration to the RTI information. And also advise UC that this is what you have asked your employers payroll to do. UC will have to manually recalculate your award using the revised earnings.

Icequeen1

huckster said:

May be the employers have entered  information incorrectly on the HMRC RTI system and Universal Credit are being involved in something which is none of their business.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been working from home and many would have had home office costs reimbursed. These payments have nothing to do with payroll and should not be entered on the payroll system.

Get your employers to correct the payroll information and RTI submission. It will then show on the DWP systems that there has been an alteration to the RTI information. And also advise UC that this is what you have asked your employers payroll to do. UC will have to manually recalculate your award using the revised earnings.

Exactly. There are only two possibilities here - your employer has put it in the wrong place on the RTI submission so it is picked up by the UC system as earnings. If that has happened, i would just asked for a mandatory reconsideration of the UC award than try for an RTI adjustment. 

The alternative is that for some reason the UC system is pulling through data it shouldn't be - which would be more worrying! 

IQ

huckster

The employer in this case appears to have paid the £200 as an extra amount within the pay section.
  There is an issue with third party section of RTI being wrongly input by employers which could be the issue. They are adding amounts which they are paying the employee, in the wrong section and UC will then affect earnings amount being considered.

It is important the employers find out what error they have made, as not all their employees will be on Universal Credit. Other employees not receiving benefits, may be totally unaware that HMRC don't have the correct information.

Icequeen1

huckster said:

The employer in this case appears to have paid the £200 as an extra amount within the pay section.
  There is an issue with third party section of RTI being wrongly input by employers which could be the issue. They are adding amounts which they are paying the employee, in the wrong section and UC will then affect earnings amount being considered.

It is important the employers find out what error they have made, as not all their employees will be on Universal Credit. Other employees not receiving benefits, may be totally unaware that HMRC don't have the correct information.

Actually, i've just re-read the post. This would probably be taxable from a HMRC perspective https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/income-tax-and-national-insurance-contributions-exemption-for-home-office-expenses/income-tax-and-national-insurance-contributions-exemption-for-home-office-expenses - i'm not sure if this concession has been extended to 2020/21. In which case maybe it isn't in the wrong box. It needs some further digging.