Moving over to Universal Credit

Coffee34

Hi, We’ve got around 2 and a half months to move over from tax credits to universal credit and I was wondering if there was a ‘best’ time of the month to quit my tax credits and start a claim for universal credit please or if it doesn’t matter? Eg. Is it better to make a new claim straight after receiving our monthly wages or just before the next payday? Or doesn’t it matter? We currently receive tax credits weekly and paid wages monthly in the middle of the month if that helps? Thanks in advance.

HillStreetBlues

With wages better to keep out of the range they are paid in as start date, this stops  sometimes getting paid twice (or nothing) in an assessment period.

Spoonie_Turtle

It depends on your circumstances really.

If you have savings over £16,000 then best to wait as long as possible to claim UC, as the disregard would only be 12 months.


If not, and if it turns out you might be better off on UC anyway, then the sooner the better.

Otherwise, if you can claim after April 8th then any transitional protection won't be immediately eroded by the annual uprating.

(And avoid around wage payment dates if possible, as already advised, as a slight wibble in the dates for bank holidays or whatever can cause problems.)

Yamor

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Otherwise, if you can claim after April 8th then any transitional protection won't be immediately eroded by the annual uprating.

Once we're getting to this point, it's worth mentioning that a claim made on 08/04/2024 should mean that the transitional protection is calculated based on new tax credits rates, but old UC rates, and it should still not be eroded by the uprating.
Might be a fight to get them to do this in practice though.

From a tax credits perspective, it's worth claiming UC just before you get paid your salary (although you should keep in mind the advice above about not claiming too close to your salary date). The reason for this is that your tax credits will be finalised based on income actually received in the period you were on tax credits.

Coffee34

Thanks for the advice. No savings and have to claim before the end of March. Makes sense to me about the finalised tax credits based on income, thank you.