Universal credit and earned income - pension contribution deduction from UC

cybertortoise

Good evening all,

I'm trying to find out what counts as earned income for the purposes of Universal Credit. 

For example, is my pension contribution income or ignored? The whole thing or only part?

What if I receive a tax refund? Is that deducted from my UC at the same rate as my wages are? 

The wage amount shown on my UC statement for a given month has never correctly reflected my actual wages since I started working at my employer 2 years ago. I understand that HMRC tells UC what I earned, but I'm trying to find out if I am missing something obvious before I ask them to investigate further.

Example month - 

Gross wages: £2283.75

          PAYE £209.40

          NI A £96.96

          Pension £187.58

          PG loan £30

          Electrical goods £218.79 (deducted from wages via work scheme)

Net pay: £1540.98

If I assume net pay plus elec goods are both earned income that should give me £1759.77, but my UC statement says I earned £1867.57. This is a difference of £107.80.

I wondered if part of my pension contribution was deducted but that would be 57.46% of my pension contribution which seems an arbitrary number. 

If I check online I can only find information saying 100% of pension contributions are disregarded, but when I asked in my online journal I was told "the deduction for your pension contribution is not disregarded when using earnings to calculate your UC entitlement". But looking at my statement under earned income it says 'Take-home pay is what's left after tax, National Insurance and any pension contributions have been deducted'.

Which is correct? Every one of my pay periods has had a discrepancy between the money HMRC says I received, and the money I actually received. 

Thanks for any info you can give.

Grumpy_chap

I don't think the pension contributions can be disregarded if the UC calculation is based on nett pay £1,541.  That has already removed the pension contribution, so if it was disregarded in addition, that would be double-counting the pension contribution.

For clarity, what are the "electrical goods"?  Is that a SS (salary sacrifice) computer scheme, or similar?

huckster

UC uses what your employer has input into HMRC system as the wages paid during the assessment period.(AP)

Gross taxable pay
Less Income tax
Less NI
Less pension

Tax rebates counted as income during AP received.

Either you are not matching the correct wage slip to what UC has used or your employers are reporting a different gross taxable pay amount to HMRC than is shown on your wage slip.

The wages UC has used are broken down on the UC system, so you can ask UC for a breakdown via your journal
E.g. what wages pay date, what gross taxable pay etc.  And then once you have this information you can then try to reconcile with your wage slips and company payroll.

cybertortoise

Thanks for your replies

@Grumpy_chap The electrical goods is salary sacrifice yes, sorry should've made that clear.

@huckster thanks I'll request that

Grumpy_chap

cybertortoise said:

I wondered if part of my pension contribution was deducted but that would be 57.46% of my pension contribution which seems an arbitrary number. 

I just thought about this.
Is all of the pension figure (£187) employee contribution?
Looking at the figures, it would have to be to get from the gross (£2,283) to the net (£1,540) but what is the employer pension contribution?
Is it possible that UC have made some adjustment to add back in the employer pension contribution?

Looking at the figures presented, I cannot see a way to get the UC statement earned (£1,867) by any combination of addition and subtraction.

Hopefully, it will become more obvious when the clarification is received of exactly which month payslip has been used by UC.