Universal Credit for Self Employed (new claim - Covid)

[foxy99]

Hi folks.

Am hoping this might ring a bell for ppl in same situation... I'll try and keep it simple

• March/April 2020. Boris is telling everyone 'don't leave house unless you need to, self employed persons can contact UC to see if eligible'
• I made a claim and thought it was weird there was no specific box to say you were self employed. Just asked when you last worked and didn't say anything about employers name or anything
• spoke to UC adviser few days later and mentioned it to him. He said 'oh yeah, aha, not to worry'
• I was earning well below their Minimum Income Floor and getting what I thought was quite generous amount (£80 per week)
• I contacted them a few times asking how do I report my income. I'm back working regularly again and worried that at end of year my income will be too high to have qualified. no answer.
• few months later I get told 'our system wasn't set up to deal with self employed claims during a pandemic' and you must now report your income for the months that have elapsed
• I did this immediately and was told have to pay it all back now as I'd failed to declare I was self employed and had realised my mistake and notified them too late.
• I made a complaint saying I'd told them from the outset I was self employed and tried to report my income and been ignored
• they've now written to me saying I was told incorrectly that the system wasn't able to accept claims from S/E during pandemic
• I made a new claim later on (as you can't see your notes etc with them when the claim ends) and it was totally different. Asks at outset about Self Employment and each month you report income. I'm not entitled so award is £0 but you are still on system

Anyway my question is did anyone else have this problem when they made a claim in March/April 2020? I'm 99.999% sure there was no field for S/E and the adviser later told me this (in writing) and now the dept are saying it didn't happed

[megaphone]

Surely if you where self employed you would have made a claim through the SEISS, Self Employment Income Support Scheme?

[Z4MCoupe]

megaphone said:

Surely if you where self employed you would have made a claim through the SEISS, Self Employment Income Support Scheme?

You can get both. They will deduct the seiss money from your uc award in the months that you got the grants.

[megaphone]

Z4MCoupe said:

megaphone said:

Surely if you where self employed you would have made a claim through the SEISS, Self Employment Income Support Scheme?

You can get both. They will deduct the seiss money from your uc award in the months that you got the grants.

Yes I'm aware, it makes the UC negligible.

[Z4MCoupe]

foxy99 said:

Hi folks.

Am hoping this might ring a bell for ppl in same situation... I'll try and keep it simple

• March/April 2020. Boris is telling everyone 'don't leave house unless you need to, self employed persons can contact UC to see if eligible'
• I made a claim and thought it was weird there was no specific box to say you were self employed. Just asked when you last worked and didn't say anything about employers name or anything
• spoke to UC adviser few days later and mentioned it to him. He said 'oh yeah, aha, not to worry'
• I was earning well below their Minimum Income Floor and getting what I thought was quite generous amount (£80 per week)
• I contacted them a few times asking how do I report my income. I'm back working regularly again and worried that at end of year my income will be too high to have qualified. no answer.
• few months later I get told 'our system wasn't set up to deal with self employed claims during a pandemic' and you must now report your income for the months that have elapsed
• I did this immediately and was told have to pay it all back now as I'd failed to declare I was self employed and had realised my mistake and notified them too late.
• I made a complaint saying I'd told them from the outset I was self employed and tried to report my income and been ignored
• they've now written to me saying I was told incorrectly that the system wasn't able to accept claims from S/E during pandemic
• I made a new claim later on (as you can't see your notes etc with them when the claim ends) and it was totally different. Asks at outset about Self Employment and each month you report income. I'm not entitled so award is £0 but you are still on system

Anyway my question is did anyone else have this problem when they made a claim in March/April 2020? I'm 99.999% sure there was no field for S/E and the adviser later told me this (in writing) and now the dept are saying it didn't happed

On UC it will ask are you working, you put yes, it will then ask what type of work you are doing and you put self employed. After that it will allow you to report your income and expenses each month. If you didnt do that at the start then at any point in your claim you could have reported a change of circumstances for work and earnings and put in you are working again.

[CoreyDog]

megaphone said:

Surely if you where self employed you would have made a claim through the SEISS, Self Employment Income Support Scheme?

Problem there, as I found, is I'd only submitted one tax return by the time SEISS was implemented so I wasn't eligible.

Luckily I found other companies still operating who threw me a bone, without them I'd have been completely screwed. Owe more beers out now than I care to count!

[foxy99]

Z4MCoupe said:

On UC it will ask are you working, you put yes, it will then ask what type of work you are doing and you put self employed. After that it will allow you to report your income and expenses each month. If you didnt do that at the start then at any point in your claim you could have reported a change of circumstances for work and earnings and put in you are working again.

Yes I know how it works. My question was did anyone have this issue when they made initial claim.

And your workaround wouldn't really have worked as the change in circumstances would have been to report employment again, not self employment

[foxy99]

megaphone said:

Surely if you where self employed you would have made a claim through the SEISS, Self Employment Income Support Scheme?

SEISS was geared more towards people who couldn't work at all but this was only the case for me for a very short time (I was ok to go back when construction workers etc go the green light).

UC is based on your income and was suitable for initial period when I got less work due to Covid lockdown

[foxy99]

Z4MCoupe said:

You can get both. They will deduct the seiss money from your uc award in the months that you got the grants.

they don't really deduct it from your award. It is counted as part of your income so it reduces the amount of any UC you are entitled to that month. for some people that could reduce the award to nil, for others it might not.

[Z4MCoupe]

foxy99 said:

Yes I know how it works. My question was did anyone have this issue when they made initial claim.

And your workaround wouldn't really have worked as the change in circumstances would have been to report employment again, not self employment

Whether anyone else had this problem wont help you. You have been overpaid and they will recover it. No amount of not understanding the system and been giving false information will get you out of paying back the money you weren't entitled to.

My workaround wasn't a workaround, that is how you report you are self employed.

[foxy99]

Z4MCoupe said:

Whether anyone else had this problem wont help you. You have been overpaid and they will recover it. No amount of not understanding the system and been giving false information will get you out of paying back the money you weren't entitled to.

My workaround wasn't a workaround, that is how you report you are self employed.

I'm afraid your workaround was a workaround. I have made a claim when the system was working correctly and it gives you the option at the outset to declare you are self employed. No requirement for lies about stopping work and becoming self employed. I've not been employed for 7 years so why would there be a need to pretend you were employed then change it.

Also since the system didn't mention self employment but there were government directives for the self employed to contact UC how would the applicant be qualified to make the decision as to what they meant by 'work' or 'working'? Should the applicant assume the system is wrong and start fiddling around with it? I don't think so.

Also am afraid your first statement is incorrect. I worked in HMRC for 23 years and there are debts written off every day where the department have made a mistake.

[foxy99]

Z4MCoupe said:

Whether anyone else had this problem wont help you.

Am not so sure about that: if the issue was common it means the person who formally advised me that it was never the case is lying to strengthen the department's case or is another member of staff who is not correctly checking their guidance before issuing a formal letter.

The department have to give out consistent information to be legally water-tight.

[Countdown]

I'm a bit confused.

When you are claiming UC every 4 weeks you are asked to declare the income you've received, and you're UC payment is based on that. It doesn't matter if you're unemployed, self employed, or employed.

I'm not sure how you cans ay you tried to declare your SE income but weren't able to

[megaphone]

foxy99 said:

megaphone said:

Surely if you where self employed you would have made a claim through the SEISS, Self Employment Income Support Scheme?

SEISS was geared more towards people who couldn't work at all but this was only the case for me for a very short time (I was ok to go back when construction workers etc go the green light).

UC is based on your income and was suitable for initial period when I got less work due to Covid lockdown

You could carry on working and still claim SEISS, as long as your work had been affected by COVID, ie you income had gone down.

[foxy99]

Countdown said:

I'm a bit confused.

When you are claiming UC every 4 weeks you are asked to declare the income you've received, and you're UC payment is based on that. It doesn't matter if you're unemployed, self employed, or employed.

I'm not sure how you cans ay you tried to declare your SE income but weren't able to

Hi sorry for late response.

I wasn't able to declare the income as, in April when I made my claim, there was no field for self employment on the application page. It just said 'when did you last work?'. I put the day before. It didn't then ask who you worked for or if it was self employment.

I was declaring my income to them in 'writing' on my journal (which is like a log-in page that you use to message your work-coach). They weren't responding to this and after I asked a few times how they would review my case dependent on income the adviser told me

'we were not set up to deal with self employed claimants during a pandemic'

He then changed my status and I was able to report my income for the preceding months in a box fashion.

Another gripe I have is that there were prominent messages on the system saying that they would be ignoring the Minimum Income Floor during the pandemic. This was about £1300 per month. I was earning less than that.

The MIF is used to stop people claiming a lot of UC by declaring very low income I guess. Like if you earn £800 you won't get more cash than someone making £1300.

What they do not prominently show however is something called the Work Allowance....

I had to do a lot of browsing to discover this.

My Work Allowance is zero (as I have no kids etc) which means that from the first £1 you earn each month 63p is deducted from your award.

The maximum award (for my category) is £411 per month so if you earn over £652 a month your award will be reduced to NIL (411/63 x 100 = 652)

This is all fair enough but the application should have included a field for Self Employment and a message afterwards saying 'if you earn more than £652 a month don't bother applying as you aren't entitled to anything'

Why display the £1300 MIF figure when the actual amount ppl with no kids can earn is £652?

[codenamecueball]

You were advised wrong. I set up a claim around the end of March and it went through as self employed and I was asked to fill out a form every month with income and expenses.

[foxy99]

Yes I did that for several months and was usually nil award. also did it (retrospectively) for all the months were I was down as 'ex employee' and that's why I have £1500 to pay back

Edited by foxy99 on Thursday 14th April 13:36

Edited by foxy99 on Thursday 14th April 13:40

[foxy99]

Ok fwiw I think I've finally worked out what went wrong with my claim and it further re-enforces that the staff haven't got a clue and assume all claimants are lying thieves.

I'm also getting bailiffs letters about the £1500 and, rather worryingly, was reading an article at weekend about government dept's passing debts to private bailiff companies and them turning up at door clamping car and demanding hundreds of £s with chip & pin thingy.

Anyway here's what I worked out....

• if you start a new claim as someone who is not working it does not give any option to declare you were self employed prior to work ending
• if you start a new claim saying you are working it offers options for employed or self-employed

So it's nothing to do with the pandemic as the wker Gary claimed, or that I made a mistake as the cheeky cow, who I don't have a name for, put on my record.

How do I know this?

Well I am now out of work completely and made a claim and hey presto the boxes were as I remembered them back when Covid kicked-in. It asked you when you last worked, then asks if you ever earned less than £547 a month. So I put 3rd March and ticked yes and it says in summary 'you have told us you last worked on x and always earned less than £537 a month. (NB when I claimed in 2020 the question was '...less than £347 a week').

So the difference is when I made 2nd claim, when I was working S/E, it sets you up as you'd expect and you need to confirm your income at end of each month.

Now that I'm not working at all we are back to the same options as when Boris was saying 'don't leave the house' so there hasn't been any change whatsoever in the application process as claimed by staff when they were trying to blame me for everything despite not even knowing how their own fking system works and therefore plucking guesses out of the air.

So today I went for my identity interview (despite having an account and Government Gateway ID etc etc) and was dealt with by an absolutely lovely woman.

We got the ID check done then was told need to come back in a week for interview and I raised my concerns again about the system having me down as previously employed and always earning less than £546 a month and, surprise surprise, she knew nothing about this and wandered about the office checking with colleagues.

She thought it was "unacceptable" that each time a claim ends you lose access to all previous notes on the record (altho she can still see them) and thought same about the £1500 debt.

None of this makes any difference obviously (as she was keen to tell me that the next person I deal with will know everything about this kind of stuff) but It's good to know I didn't imagine things and that the staff were guessing what went wrong every previous time I queried it.

Still don't understand why you can't state at the outset that your previous income was from self employment. Have no idea what relevance the 'did you ever earn...' question is and why it then hoodwinks you into appearing as a liar 'you state you ALWAYS earned less than...'

NB I also discovered you can't claim Jobseekers Allowance if you were previously Self Employed.

There used to be income-based JSA and contributions-based JSA. The (badly-named ?) 1st one was for people like school-leavers or self-employed who didn't have any easily-checkable prior income. Should have been called no-income based JSA. The other one was for ex-employees who'd paid class 1 national insurance but not available to Self Employed who'd paid Class 2 NIC.

There is now only 1 type called New Style JSA and that basically replaces contributions-based.

I didn't know this and spent best part of a month waiting on my JSA claim being processed then called up to be told 'you're getting fk all you should try Universal Credits' which is why I'm back there

Edited by foxy99 on Thursday 14th April 13:38

Edited by foxy99 on Thursday 14th April 13:40

[Franco5]

foxy99 said:

SEISS was geared more towards people who couldn't work at all but this was only the case for me for a very short time (I was ok to go back when construction workers etc go the green light).

UC is based on your income and was suitable for initial period when I got less work due to Covid lockdown

Self employed tradesman could work as normal and claim £2500 SEISS a month and plenty of them did. Sunak was hailed a genius however can nobody see that all he was doing was giving public money away with no checks and balances leading to unprecedented levels of fraud and that any fool could have done that. He didn’t invent furlough it had been used in Germany and other countries for years. Anyway his arrogance has now been exposed for all to see and the effects of his profligacy are coming home to roost.

Edited by Franco5 on Friday 15th April 20:53

[Sticks.]

OP, have you spoken to the CAB about this? From what you've said it's likely to have affected other people so they may be on the ball with it.

Did you have a formal decision about the overpayment saying the dates, amount and that you are required to repay?