Child tax credits and self-employment - anyone with experience who can advise?

[Callieco]

My DP is self-employed and I need to know for child tax credits application whether it is better to say he works a large amount of hours or a small amount in order to get the maximum amount of money we can (he earns very little compared to national average and I'm on unpaid mat leave atm following premature birth of baby which has extended the amount of time I am taking off tomake up for so much time spent in hospital, so we need the money). It's very difficult to say how many hours he works as it is creative work but it is definitely full-time, so am not trying to defraud the system, just get what we are entitled to. Hope this makes sense, am bit tired! Has anyone else been in this situation? Thanks for any advice.

www.entitledto.co.uk/entitlementcalculator.aspx?cid=6420f50b-d58f-4121-8255-db9cce93399e

It goes on annual earnings so you cant change the hours around to give you more money - he will have to be working at least 30 hours though to qualify for WTC.

We've had a huge problem with this. DH is a director of a limited company. Theoretically this is full time, but the actual work that the company gets is variable. A couple of weeks on, then several without anything. It's not at all clear whether being a director all the time is enough to class as full time, but we have assumed not to be on the safe side. And trying to chop and change to accommodate the times when he is out on contracts full time is just way too complicated.

is that right Happymum - I thought you could get working tax credit at 16 hours plus a week.

I'm too tired to check now

When my boss enquired she was told 16 hours if your single but 30 if a couple so i assumed that was correct. However looking on a few websites the 30 hours seems to apply only if you have no children! She worked full time so wrong advice didnt affect her but she did trust what they said.

you get a 30-hour element if he works over 30 hours i think- other than that the actual number of hours doesn't make a difference to the ammount they pay.

Thanks for that . Will take the plunge into it all now.

I work just over 16hours per week and get WTC would i get more if i could increase my hours to 30 then? I may be able to do that if i sort out childcare so would be good!

You get extra for working over 30 hours.

Reading the tax credits renewal pack it states, "for couples with children it is your joint working hours that count towards the 30 hours", so depends what your partner works.

Oh right....at the moment i do 16 hours i am tempted to do extra but have been worried about losing money, wonder if i could try and work it out somehow, might be good!

I would go to teh Tax credits website (I will find it in a sec). Then you can put all the info in and play around with differnt 'scenarios' to see what works out best. You should be somewhere close to the truth though (obviously).

You could probably do the same on the 'entitled to' sire that M2pW posted.

I am not sure what the influence is but they always ask to let you know of changes in hours. I think the key boundaries are 16hrs and 30hrs although I don't really know how they affect the award.

here you go

You basically fill in everything they ask and it tells you how much you should get. It is not a formal application so you can play around with different sceanrios and see what fits.