Maternity allowance?

[glitterglitters]

Hey everybody. I'm a freelance copywriter and work for a number of clients. I'm expecting a baby and have just discovered that I'm entitled to maternity allowance and KIT days.

I have a client I do a piece of work a week for but only takes a couple of hours. Could I spread my KIT days over my maternity allowance period and then just do multiple pieces of work (so four pieces for example) in one day and invoice it all in the same day if the client is happy to do so?

I wouldn't take on any other work and would be finishing my other contracts beforehand.

You are a PAYE employee?

No freelancer so I get paid per article I write and fill I self assessment etc.

So dependent on NI contributions you may be eligible for maternity allowance.

Where does the entitlement for KIT days come from?

You can have up to 10 working days or KIT day equivalency to maintain your business. You need to keep a record and inform the Job Centre of this. This is from the government site, maternity in action and multiple forums and baby websites.

I pay national Insurance for both Class 2 and 4 as well.

This is from the maternity in action site.

It doesn't work quite like that I believe but check with job centre plus.

You CAN work up to 10 days without your maternity allowance ending. But no-one is obliged to give you any work or let you do this. So you might get some work and that might be up to 10 days but you may have no options to work at all. It wouldn't have to be an existing client and so how you work for them doesn't matter. They are not your employer.

You can work more (checking emails etc) but can only charge for 10 days.

I have a few clients but this one is a regular client that I know I'll be working with indefinitely. I wouldn't be doing any more work for them than normal but would just be all in one sitting which is possible to do (I only do the 2 hours each week to slow time for other clients and business development). I wouldn't be their employee and I get paid per article not by an hourly rate or daily rate, I can do all communication in that one day as it's the same article (listings type) I do for each week.

If that makes sense? So i would do say one day per month work but would do all the 2 hour articles I'd do normally by week in advance in one day... if that makes sense? I wouldn't work with any other clients or look for new clients in order to not go over the 10 days of my allowance.