Self employment and universal credit

[AnxiousHippie]

Hi all, just looking for advice really.

Background: Single parent to 2 disabled kids. Both get DLA. I get carers allowance for one.
I claim universal credit, this includes housing element.

Anyway, I started selling on etsy March (2025) and by December I'd sold £2200 worth of goods. However, my profit was minimal (if any) - it was really a hobby. Anyway, I started wondering about becoming self employed. I'm recently aware that I'll need to complete a form through etsy as I've exceeded £1000 worth of sales.

Is it really worth being self employed or should I just call it a day? The majority of my sales occurred from October until December.
Also, am I in trouble for selling on etsy? It never really occurred to me that I might have received an overpayment because of this.
Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any advice.

Anyone??

If this is a hobby with no overheads and you’ve sold £2200 worth of goods rory no profit then you’re doing something really really wrong.

But no, you cannot have a business (which is what you are doing) without informing UC and registering as self employed.

The £1000 rule is a HMRC rule. You needed to tell UC as soon as you started selling. You’d have needed to register as self employed straight away, and you’d need to declare profits each month.

That amount over that time period won’t make any difference to your UC unless you earned it all over a couple of months. There is no minimum income floor if you get carers allowance and UC ignore some income each month. Moving forward decide whether you want to be self employed, then you can register and every month upload your income and expenses they ignore the first £400 or so.

This is what is thought @BessieSurtees
My net profit was much lower than 2200. Once Etsy took fees, postage and materials.
I dunno, it gave me a creative outlet in which I didn't consider I could be doing something wrong.
Thank you all for replying.

It doesn’t matter, you still need to tell them. Rather than have questions be asked and then them looking further into your life when they do a review and want to see the costs and expenses and everything.

You need to do it properly, even if you’re not making a profit. But you’re doing something really badly if you’ve got no profit from £2200z

There is an assumption if you are self employed that you are making a few hundred a month for universal credit purposes. So I would say better to stop.

@starpatch when you are entitled to carers allowance there is no assumption

That was tax credits. People could claim to be self employed and earn a couple hundred a month forever, then tax credits would top them up to what was considered necessary to live on. UC doesn’t work like that. You get one year as a new start up but after that, there is a minimum income floor. You must earn the equivalent of full time minimum wage, if you don’t, your calculation is still done as if you had. They don’t pay out extra to cover the gap if you don’t earn up to your income floor.

But that doesn’t apply to OP. She still needs to inform them of her self employment though.

@Bobiverseyou are mistaken, it’s UC not tax credits because the minimum income floor is turned off for certain people. Carers being one of them

Which is exactly what I said. Exactly.

One poster made a general comment about people going self employed to earn a few hundred in order to get UC but that doesn’t work. It did happen on tax credits but UC doesn’t work like that.

It also does not apply to the OP, so that posters comment was doubly wrong. Which is exactly what I said. It does not apply to the OP.

She doesn’t need to work, she doesn’t need to “fake self employment.” There would be no assumption of anything going on just to be able to claim benefits in the way that poster insinuated. Making their comment totally not applicable. That was my point. Which part do you disagree with because your post makes no sense given what I said?

Thanks everyone, I have a phone call today with my work coach for a self employment review to see how my earnings have increased compared to my minimum income floor.
I'm so scared! Has anyone been through this? I have my monthly totals from Etsy - am I likely to need anything else?
TIA

Also, only just seen your reply @Bobiverse. Just to clarify, I’m not “faking” anything. I care for my two sons well over 35 hours a week, and this started as a hobby—someone suggested it might count as self-employment, which is why I asked. As I said I’ve got a call with UC later and I’ll take it from there.

I never said you were! Can people just not ready anymore?

I was replying to another poster who said that people do this just to claim benefits. But it doesn’t work like that anymore. It did work on tax credits. Another poster then told me I was wrong; because they didn’t understand what was being said so I explained my post.

It was another poster accusing you of faking self employment by earning a couple hundred a month in order to claim benefits. I was explaining why that is not what you are doing, why it isn’t possible anymore and also why it doesn’t even apply or you. Jesus.

My apologies @Bobiverse