Running online shop while on maternity leave

[chestnutlady]

Hello,

My first baby is due in May (v exciting!!) and I am in the process of setting up an online sewing store. I am wondering if anyone has any experience / advice in terms of how they ran their small business while on maternity leave? I am eligible for "Maternity Allowance" which is the self-employed equivalent of maternity pay, but I am not sure what the rules are.

Would I be eligible to claim maternity allowance if I am fulfilling orders when they come in, as this is a form of "working"? What if a family member fulfilled the orders for me so I myself am not actually working?

I have been searching online on directgov and hmrc for answers but not found anything yet. Just wondering what other people's experiences are in this regard ? What did other self-employed mumsnetters do with their business or online shop when they were on "maternity leave"?

Many thanks for your help!

Have a look at this technical guidance to MA, there is a paragraph on this page about working while receiving MA.

I'm not an expert and when I claimed MA as self-employed it wasn't a shop, so I just stopped working for a bit. I found this from this page...

[What happens if] I do some work for an employer or as a self employed person before the end of my Maternity Allowance period?

You will lose MA for the days you work.
You will be able to work for your employer or as a self employed person for up to 10 days without losing any Maternity Allowance. These days are called Keeping in Touch days (KIT). If you work more than 10 days you will lose Maternity Allowance for the days that you have worked. You must tell Incapacity Benefits Branch about any work you do.

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I think that means you can work for 10 days without losing maternity allowance. I'm not sure if that's 10 days full time equivalent (in which case it could be an hour a day for lots more days?) or any time on 10 days IYSWIM.

If you employ a family member you're going to have to register as an employer and fill in forms with the HMRC, register for PAYE etc. This might be more trouble than it's worth.

I found the Mational Insurance people were quite helpful when working out the MA entitlement (as you sure you've paid enough NI contributions etc). I think JobCentre plus deal with the claims though (it's been a couple of years, so might have changed).

it took me so long to type (and deal withds!) that Flowery got there first! my post is guessing a bit, she's the expert

As others have said, you can work for 10 days without losing any MA (part of a day counts I think, but obviously as a self-employed person it's up to you to log your hours). This is the same as SMP. However, where MA is different from SMP is that you can work on some days and get MA paid for the other days in the week. It's at the Maternity Allowance people's discretion, but when I returned to work 2 days a week before the end of the Maternity Allowance period, I was paid MA for the other 3 days a week.

The difficulty with an online shop is that the "work" will entail an odd half hour here or there, fulfilling orders... I know I am entitled to 10 KIT days where I can work, but as you can't use "part" days only full days, this would be used up very quickly.

I hadn't thought about the need to register as an employer if someone else fulfills my orders for me - that makes that idea unviable..

Bramshott, I didn't realise you can claim MA "part time", that is really helpful to know. Maybe I will have to do that.

It's hard to know who to call - I have a number for JobCentre Plus that I will try today, maybe they can help some more. I will post back with info if I find anything else out!

I just spoke to the Jobcentre and they told me that keeping the online shop going while I am on Maternity Allowance is fine, as long as someone else is fulfilling orders on my behalf i.e. it is not me doing the work. Your business is allowed to bring in income even while you're claiming maternity allowance, as long as you yourself are not doing the work.

What seemed odd is they said it doesn't matter if it is a family member and they're unpaid, which seems odd to me?? But the woman on the phone checked with her supervisor and they said it was fine.

Bramshott - it sounds like you were lucky to get your MA part time, I asked them about this and initially they said it's not possible, then the lady checked with her supervisor and she said it was down to a specialist team to decide each case on an individual basis!

I hope this information might help someone else too.

I wonder if they'd ever check.. I'm not suggesting that you try and fiddle it, but if you're not paying someone to do the work, how can you prove it wasn't you?

Anyway, good luck with your pregnancy and maternity leave. Hope you manage to find someone to sew for you while you have your leave

Thanks bumpybecky :-)

yeah I guess it is very difficult to prove who actually does the work. haha, I have very funny images in my head now, of my husband sitting at the sewing machine trying to sew!!! He's been great so far during the pregnancy but I wonder if that would be one step too far, lol

Luckily there's no actual sewing work, it's just despatching orders of materials (fabric, patterns etc) so I can easily train him and / or my mother in law up on that!!