Universal credit review help

[lisamxxx]

Please no judgement. I have a joint claim with my partner and we have been asked to send 4months of bank statements each as part of a uc review. My partner had been unemployed last year and in July started selling on eBay mainly things like CDs, records, dvds to help as I went on maternity leave. He made around £3800 from July to January doing this. In December we realised we would need to tell the job centre as he was really making a profit so he told them and they set up a self employed interview thing for him which was due to be in January. However, in January he got a job and this got cancelled. Now we have been asked to do the review will we get in trouble for this? I’ll add as well during the time he was unemployed we used my bank for everything so all the eBay money was withdrew in to my bank account. Can anyone give me any advice on what will happen with this?

Nothing will happen. The review is standard, the agent will like ask about the eBay deposits during the phone interview. As long as you haven’t gone over the £6k where it will affect your benefit, you’ll be fine. Believe me, I’ve dealt with people having tens of thousands coming in that they haven’t declared!

Do you work for uc? Hope you don’t mind me asking I am just so worried not sure if it’s best just to explain the situation on my journal or just wait until they do the checks

@lisamxxxYes, I work in UC reviews. You can leave a journal message explaining if that would help ease your anxiety. The agent will probably reply and take on board what you’ve said. They may still ask about it during interview, but really £3800 over 6 months isn’t all that much.

Thank you for replying! Once they see the undeclared income from eBay do you think any money we have been overpaid will be taken off future uc payments or maybe my partners wages? For me this would be best case scenario as I am genuinely worried about being accused of benefit fraud

If he only made £3800 in six months you won’t have been overpaid.

The stuff you sold on EBay - was it your stuff or stuff you bought with the intention of selling and making a profit?

This is the important question.

If it was all your own stuff then you have absolutely nothing to worry about.

If you bought things to sell then the difference between what you paid for it and what you sold it for is profit and should have been declared as self employed income.

Once we know which one it was people on here can advise

I just assumed that the money he made on eBay each month should have been added to my maternity pay from work which would mean we would have been entitled to less universal credit?

Some of it was his own but I think a lot of it was stuff he bought from charity shops too then sold on

@lisamxxxDont tell them that

Bad advice, they can ask Ebay for all the details and it will be obvious if the seller is having a clear out vs selling on a commercial basis.

Always tell them the truth.....

Then the PROFIT (not the total amount received from EBay) on the stuff he bought from charity shops should have been declared.

Let’s say £2,000 of the £3,600 was stuff he/you owned. That leaves £1,600 made from charity shop sales. If it cost him £800 to buy that stuff then the only actual income is £800. He can then take off his expenses such as packaging, petrol and parking/travel going to the charity shop or the post office etc. That would potentially bring his ‘profit’ down to £600.

But seriously ….. how would they know? Do they have a detailed inventory of everything you owned? Unless he is selling lots of the same item they have no way of knowing.

If he was going to carry on doing this then yes, you were absolutely doing the right thing in registering as self employed but as a one off?? Many would keep quiet. Work out exactly how much real profit he made from reselling and at the interview give them that figure. But honestly, unless you tell them (or he’s sold 40 copies of Mama Mia on DVD on EBay so is obviously trading)they will never know.

Just to clarify a lot of what he sold was bought from charity shops, however he did sell a fair few of his own records, old dvd box sets etc too so I’m unsure what the total profit was he made from the sales. He has made 96 sales according to eBay and each sale had 10% go to charity through eBay. He told his work coach this and she was very positive about it but once he started his new job they cancelled his self employment interview he was due to have and that was a few weeks ago now. He’s not had time to do eBay now with working full time

Get him to go through the 96 sales. Write down each one that was from a charity shops, how much he sold it for and how much he bought it for. Ignore any he owned himself. That is his income (less packaging costs etc.)

Had he not already told his work coach he was doing this he could honestly have got away with saying it was all his own stuff and they would have no way of knowing it wasn’t all his collection. (Not that I condone that, but they really wouldn’t)

The fact that you were going to register as self employed shows DWP that you are honest which counts in your favour.

Do the above calculations and give them the figure. Or just guess! Like I say, they have no way of checking and DWP have much bigger fish to fry than chasing after a few charity shop eBay sales.

Can anyone advise on what the worst case scenario is likely to be?

UC can ask for more months or years worth of bank statements due to the undeclared income. They can suspend their payments whilst they investigate.

Possible overpayment
civil penalty
they can also ask for more months or years worth of bank statements. But hopefully you’ll get an understanding claim reviewer.