Any legal way I can earn this £250 without being forced from legacy to UC?

[gjog]

Hello,

Would be grateful if anyone knows or can point me towards an answer please -

We are on legacy benefits since my DH was made redundant two years ago. We are both registered Carers as both our DC are disabled and receiving DLA. My DH used his redundancy pay towards re-training over past two years in a role he can do self-employed to fit around our children's needs.

I have been offered a one-off piece of work on a freelance basis to earn £250. I'm not remotely interested in the money as it's purely a one-off, but I want the work experience. I've asked if I can do the work for free but this isn't an option as there needs to be accountability for safeguarding.

I am hoping in a year's time to register as self-employed to do work like this, but I can't do it yet because my youngest child is out of school and I can't commit to work until DC is back in school.

As soon as I register self-employed (or DH does) we will automatically migrate from legacy to UC, with no income for first 5 weeks, plus then all benefits via UC will relate to what I earn s/e each month.

This is a heck of a lot of aggro for £250 when I won't then be earning anything else for a year.

Is there any legal way round this, ie for me to be paid £250 without it triggering us to transfer to UC?

I know there is a £1k threshold where you don't have to register as s/e under this limit.

But it would still be benefit fraud to accept any income and not declare it, wouldn't it?

Thank you for reading and any advice!

Ask for a cheque and then don't cash it?

What @Sunnydaysaredefhere said

Could it be paid elsewhere? Eg a charity?

Ask for a cheque but they might not do them. Also ask what their payment rules are. For instance you may have to invoice them, ask them if you can do this later in the year, as long as the money is allocated in their budget they might not care. Some places (like DHs work) don’t pay for 90 days as well.

What are the legacy benefits you're on?

They will want to pay within the financial year though, depends when you mean by ‘next year’.

Also is it the amount of money in one go? You could ask to do separate invoices if you can earn some money?

Asking for a cheque is a brilliant idea! However it is a sole trader who does their own accounts, and a) unlikely they would have a cheque book and b) they do their own accounts so would notice ...

I would need to invoice them, yes. I guess I could do that in a years time?

@Bromptotoo we receive DLA, Carers Allowance, Child Tax Credits, Child Benefit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax reduction.

This is a good question. I assumed I wasn't allowed to earn any amount of money at all whilst on benefits without declaring it, but maybe I am?

I don't want to do anything illegal, partly because I'm incredibly grateful for the benefits support we receive and I don't want to be disrespectful. Partly because doing anything illegal would give me horrendous anxiety.

Could they give you a gift voucher? I’m in a different country so rules may be different but as far as I know you are allowed a gift voucher up to a certain amount as a once off.

You don't have to declare the first £1000 of self employed income income. The government allows you to earn up to £1,000 a year in trading income without registering as self-employed or paying any tax. So if you have a small side business that doesn’t bring in much income, you may not need to pay tax on it.

www.xero.com/uk/guides/self-employed-tax/tax-thresholds/#:~:text=The%20government%20allows%20you%20to,to%20pay%20tax%20on%20it.

That's a good idea but I'm not sure it would meet the sole trader's need for accountability ...

Thank you @StylishM , do you know if aside from the tax position I should declare a/e earnings under £1k for benefits purposes?

That's an interesting idea, and I could give the gift voucher to a charity or buy things for a good bank so that I didn't have any gain from it ...

No you don't need to declare it if it's under £1K for the year in total

That's all good, particularly that you get Tax Credits. I'd normally expect there to be a means tested legacy Income Replacement benefit (income support or JSA/ESA) to be in that sort of mix.

Is there anything I've missed?

A bank can issue a cheque via his business account.

@Bromptotoo No, we have never had Income Support or JSA/ESA ... we used to get WTC but it stopped when my DH was made redundant. I was already Registered as a Carer and in receipt of CA, and he then registered too once he was redundant and he was awarded CA too.

Really?!! I can earn £1k in a year and not tell any of the benefits agencies?

If so, this is the answer!!

Ah! Excellent, thank you, I think I'm gathering several options here and I only posted about ten mins ago! 😊

You have to let carers allowance know as they deduct it if you are over the weekly income limit even by a penny.

there’s an income level per week for carers allowance. So you’d better check that. It’s like £140 or something? But if this was over a period of time then it would be under anyway. You might need to tell them though.

You can google this on HMRC's pages but you don't need to declare it to anyone if you're earning less than £1K self employed in the tax year, including the benefits office

But you still need to declare it as income to HMRC for the purposes of tax credits.

You can get £50 in vouchers under trivial amount scheme. So get 5 of those. There's no limit to the number, just the amount of money for each voucher.