Just wondering if anyone has any insights to this -
My 'main' regular job is being employed part time, but I earn very little (about £600 per month). I also do some occasional freelance self employed work for my partner's business. I'm registered with HMRC and once I've done my tax return for this last financial year it will work out that I've earned slightly more through self employment than employment, as even though I do it much less often, the freelance work pays a lot better than my regular job.
I'm 20 weeks pregnant so am starting to look into maternity pay options. My job doesn't have any enhanced maternity package, so it would be statutory pay based off 90% of my average earnings, so would work out somewhere around £138 per week. But as a self employed person, as long as I've paid enough class 2 national insurance, it looks like I could get the maximum statutory maternity allowance, which is £156.66.
Does anyone know if I am allowed to claim maternity allowance as self employed and just tell my employer to not bother claiming for me? I would still need maternity leave from my job, just not the pay (Unless I'm allowed to claim both?? But I don't think that's an option.)
One reason I'm worried about this is because my main job is quite physical and I'm suffering quite badly already with SPD and might not be able to do it for much longer, so I'm worried that if I go on sick leave then I would be put on statutory sick pay and that would reduce my maternity pay allowance from my job even more. But the self employed work is something I can do from home so could keep that up right until the end.
Any insights into my situation and how to best make it work would be really appreciated!