To believe UC needs a bloody makeover!

[Lovethystupidneighbour]

Don’t panic - not a benefits bashing thread.

I see a lot of negativity around the benefits system in the UK (namely UC) but it needs to be said that in the right circumstances you can be very comfortable on benefits. It seems the government is incompetent and distributing these benefits efficiently. Why do some people get too much money and others get not enough to breathe on? Seems bloody ridiculous to me. UC is not fit for purpose!

AIBU to think they need to create a better system? How is this the best they can come up with?

Do you mind explaining to me is this you only get to keep 45p on each £1 or is that 45p then taxed so you get even less or is this all below the tax free threshold anyway.

Anything over £684 in take home wages there is a reduction in UC. So if I earn £684 then I can keep the £1000 UC I receive a month.

If I earn over £684 by overtime or any other means, my UC is reduced by 55p for every £1 I earn over that amount.

So my take home pay is £1000 and my UC is reduced to £750 as I have earned over the £684 (rough figures).

It feels like the same money but achieved in a different way which makes it feel not worth earning over £684 or 18 hours a month.

Tax doesn't really come into it as I only pay a tiny amount.

It sounds very demotivating.

It’s £273 higher a month

not a huge amount really for getting no housing help

I think it's wrong in that it pays to work part time when you rent and you get a nice generous top up of UC. If you have a mortgage no help so you have to work full time. Also too much earnings are disregarded in the calculation as an encouragement to work. This means someone on UC is often better off than someone earning the same amount, not on UC.

@Catlover1705
Also too much earnings are disregarded in the calculation as an encouragement to work. This means someone on UC is often better off than someone earning the same amount, not on UC.

Surely the person not getting UC could claim it if they chose? And therefore have the same income.

I was thinking that.

Totally agree that if working part time is financially more rewarding than full time work the system needs reforming. The benefits culture needs to stop, I find it hard to believe that people feel otherwise.

It’s almost as if it’s been socially engineered that way to hide the fact that there aren’t enough full-time permanent jobs for all of those that require them isn’t it?

The problem is it's just been around so long. It started with tax credits topping up people's income in the early 2000's. On tax credits one of a couple couple just not work at all until their kids left education and they were generously topped up. UC is not quite so generous in that lone parents do have to look for work once their child turns 3 but if you have a working partner then you can still have no real obligation to work as long as your partner earn above a threshold which is still set pretty low. Tax credits allowed people to get topped up with working tax credits for years on end in self employed hobby jobs which earnt barely any profit. It is only just in recent months that this has ended when these people have had to switch to UC and their businesses are suddenly not deemed viable on UC and they've been asked to look for proper work ! Shocking how long this has all been allowed to continue. I guess as others have said though it's been allowed to continue to keep unemployment stats down.

And people still get that big disregard even if they live with parents and have no housing costs at all because parents don't charge them anything to live there or if they own their home outright ! I see many older couples claiming UC who have no housing costs because their mortgage is all paid off and they still have this £670 odd of earnings disregarded each month, due to one of them getting LCW.

Why would anyone be jealous of someone who has limited capacity for work. It literally means they can’t work as many hours as you.

If you are healthy then you would be in the work search category anyway, so would not need a work allowance.

On a joint claim the work allowance applies to the claim so you could have one of a couple who is perfectly healthy and able to work. Of course a work allowance won't apply if someone is single and not working.

Yes because there is an actual individual who CANNOT work in the way others do. It’s not a random gift.

Neither the person living rent free with parents nor the couple with mortgage paid of will be entitled to the housing element.

Therefore their entitlement will be less than if they were renting. They will get less UC.

(And for the couple with mortgage paid off, they will have a lower earnings disregard than if they were still paying the mortgage, so basically entitled to less UC.)

A couple with a mortgage paid off still get the higher work allowance because they have no rent element on their claim, assuming they qualify for a work allowance obviously. You could have a couple who inherited money and paid off the mortgage ( because this is also allowed on UC), with teenage kids so they get a work allowance and they would still get the higher work allowance despite having no rent or mortgage to pay.

Working part time is not financially more rewarding than working part time. It just isn't.

The UC system was specifically designed this way. "Making work pay" was the slogan.

Under the previous system, there were cliff edges to entitlement, where working a few extra hours could mean less money. Under UC that has been removed - every extra hour you work is more money.

Under tax credits couldn't you work an extra £2500 a year without needing to report it?

I stand corrected on that! Gosh. That IS ridiculous!

Think I got mixed up because I had previously looked into it from the POV of paying a mortgage, so somehow got it into my head that's why it was higher.

I wonder what on earth their reasoning for that is?

It was to do with if your income changed enough for them to immediately make changes. Otherwise it would be taken into account the following year when your award was reassessed.

Under UC these changes in income affect entitlement immediately. (There is a stupid thing here where if you get paid 4 weekly, you'll sometimes have two paydays within the UC calender month and so entitlement goes right down as that's seen as monthly income!)

You still get more income overall the more you work. The dramatic cliff edges around ESA, JSA, and before that Income Support and Incapacity benefit, have gone.

Please can you quote a case study for each scenario, with figures? Otherwise it's just what you think with no evidence.

Yeah but it's bloody close to being there same money. I earn £1000 and get £800 UC. If I go full time I would earn £2000 (as I work 0.5 headcount) so it's £200 less. That ain't worth busting my balls over.

You could read the comments on this thread and it gives an indication of both sides of the coin