Universal Credit - Self-Employment and PAYE - Can't do both ?

[Constella]

Apparently if your PAYE hours are below that required by the minimum income floor, you can work another PAYE job to top up, but Self Employed earnings don't count. Does anyone understand the reasoning behind this?

I'm finding this so hard. The hours I'm required to work at the equivalent of minimum wage, means I cannot return to my University job after lock down. Before lock down I worked my PAYE job as well as some freelance work to top up my earnings, which was fine under the old Tax Credits system. Now it appears I cannot return to any of my work because they only count PAYE work and my PAYE hours were just shy of the minimum required!

It would help if I could understand why - my job coach just seemed to brush over it. Does anyone have any ideas?

The Minimum Income Floor only applies to self employed income. At the moment it is not being applied at all - you just report your actual income and expenses on a cash in, cash out basis at the end of each Assessment Period. PAYE comes through automatically via the payroll. New claims from self employed people are not currently being assessed for gainful self-employment so no MIF's are being applied. It might be that your PAYE means that you would not be considered to be earning enough to be gainfully self employed but that does not mean that you couldn't carry on with freelance work and report your earnings monthly. A combination of both might place you in the light touch regime which would mean less contact with the JC. Maybe your Work Coach is preparing you for when normal service resumes

Thanks carben. It seems such a complex system. I'll try to get more clarification from my work coach. I thought normal service was resumed from June 30th with sanctions applying again?

Commitments are starting up again and this could mean a sanction if they are not met without a good reason. They will be quite limited for now and individual circumstances should be taken into account. Nothing yet about the MIF returning.

Okay, thanks very much