Universal credit review and paid surveys.

[Smallngrumpy]

Got message to send bank statement etc for review. I do paid surveys which I never declared as didn't know I had to. What's likely to happen?

How much have you been getting for them?

Maybe 30 or 40 per month

If it is that regular then it is an income. Just do as they say. My husband has a small income from playing at church. It had to be declared.

I appreciate you all saying it should be declared. My issue is I haven't declared it and am having a review. What will happen.

is it def for paid surveys? i think for sake of 40 a month it wont make much difference as the first 200 odd isnt included

All they'll do is ask what it is if they call after the review. I imagine they'll ignore it/not be bothered. Even if they were it wouldn't generate an overpayment with that small an amount

My concern is fraud. So I may be best to get infront of this and drop a message on my journal. Yes its just from paid surveys. And I dont believe they will ignore it but need to know what the likely outcome will be??

Maybe just do an update on your earnings and put it in there and see if it affects anything! I doubt it will x

Anyone had experience of this. Im so anxious about whats going to happen.

Is it the only money you've earned?

Why didn’t you declare it?

Yes its the only money Ive "earned", and I didnt know I had to declare it. My point is what will happen now? Has anyone any experience of this?

You know it was income? You earned it? Why would you not know you had to declare it?

Of course you had to declare it! It's income and you know it is.

I would speak to them then and say that you hadn't realised you had to declare it as income, because you don't need to for tax purposes as well below the threshold, but now realise the error of your ways. Hopefully if you come clean they will show leniency.
What is your personal earning threshold before deductions from your UC amount? If its all deductible then I would expect you will have to pay that back, it's 55 pence per pound earned I believe.

There are various places people get payment from like cashback sites, usually best to get vouchers for stuff like that. I would probably just ring them up and tell them you didn't realise.

Note on journal so just wait and see what happens.

Depends if you have a not capable of work element to your UC. It may discredit this. If not I can’t see how it is fraud it’s an over site at most.

It's a minor overlooking and 40 quid. They're not going to throw the book at you.
At most they'll check if it would have affected what they paid you. Find that you owe them some money back and you'll have to pay back a small amount of money. Probably out of your next payment, or on a payment scheme.

They're looking for people defrauding the system and taking thousands more than they're owed. Not someone using paid surveys to put food on the table.

I'm probably going to get flamed but i think it's crap that due to these reviews you can effectively no longer do surveys while on UC, I always did the odd survey when I was on JSA for £5 £10 here and there and it really helped, especially since benefits don't cover the essentials. It's shit and I don't know whether they will ask you to pay the money back, they might do. There must be loads of people doing the same thing.

No flaming from me.

I don't do surveys (I did years back but would always be filtered out from most), but I now use Mistplay when I play games on my phone. I probably get about £10 every 2-3 weeks, and it is in the form of Amazon vouchers. No involvement with my bank at all.

My work couch said all earnings had to be declared, but as far as I know, you can only declare earnings if you are employed, be it by an employer, or self employed. And if you take less than £1000 a year, HMRC don't want to know anyway, so I have no idea how that works with UC and reporting earnings... if that makes sense.

What did they say at the review?

Was there an update in how it went?

Update ?