Why did this happen with Universal Credit?

[kmo0416]

I recently got my first payment statement for Universal Credit and it awarded me the full standard amount because I don't have savings over £6000 and have not made above the minimum income in the assessment period.

This is based on information I declared and is all truthful, but they did not ask for any proof. So, it makes me wonder how they would know if I or someone else were not to tell the truth.

Also, since I am not employed anymore I did not make any money and that was reported in the statement i.e. 'you have made income of £0.00 in the assessment period" but if I did have a job, how would they find out how much money I was earning? Would HMRC tell them in the form of taxes or would an employer tell them?

Yes they get info from HMRC and adjust accordingly.

Hmrc inform them monthly, and they do broad bank account checks that flag saving levels.

But why did they just believe that I had less than £6000 when I could have theoretically lied? I obviously did not lie but it seems odd to me?

Also, how would they find out about Student Loans which they count as income? Does SFE inform them automatically like HMRC?

I can't remember what it's called but there is a system which checks, it was in the news a couple of years back about their powers to check changing. I think it was something AI based that checked for suspicious activity or levels but couldn't see the actual account activity or something like that, then if it flags an issue they can get a warrant to properly look.

They don't believe it. They run checks on the balances of your bank accounts.

And yes probably they get notifications from Student Loans.

I inadvertently claimed when I had over 6k coming to me (total of savings plus a redundancy pay). It just didn't pay me for the first month until my savings went down. It works.

And you can't suspiciously get rid of savings either as it checks that.

It’s very hard to prove you do not have savings.

think about it.

how do you prove you don’t?

so they ask you to declare you don’t and then if they find you do it’s fraud.

obviously HMRC link - if you are on self assessment and declare interest they’ll be able to work out whether someone has savings from that.

Employer has to tell HMRC, HMRC systems link to UC.

Same with student loan.

You've given them details of your bank accounts as well.