Hi A friend seems to have a problem, she is self employed, single parent, works 25 hours per week, £100 per week income (if she's lucky) one child on DLA, receives CA, council is saying she can only work 9 hours per week to receive the full (91%) council tax benefit, yet working tax credits say minimum hours need to be 16 hours. Does all this sound right? What can she do?

Hi, Not sure if this is the right subforum to post this but I've seen a thread similar to mine so I'll leave this here. Have a bit of an issue with the last company I've worked for and was hoping you guys could help me out with some advice. I'm a self employed tiler and I worked for about a month for a company in London doing kitchen/bathroom tiling. After the site was finished they paid me but not the full amount, about £500 after tax were missing. I called the manager I worked for and he said he'll look into it. Next day I called him again and he said that I made some mistakes and someone called me and told me about them and asked me to come fix them but I refused so they hired someone else to fix and paid him that amount. This is simply not true, I haven't received such a call and if I would have I would have gone to fix my mistakes. This is what I told the guy and he said he'll ask again. Next day I call him again and he says the same story and that they can't pay two people for the same job so there is nothing he can do. They pay £65 per bathroom/kitchen so that means that I must've made mistakes in 9-10 bathrooms. I have 7+ years of tiling experience, take pride in my work and never had such a problem. Not saying it's impossible for me to make mistakes since we all do, but making such mistakes that they wont pay a penny in any of the 10 bath/kitchens in a month is kinda impossible. What would be the best way to deal with this? I've read some threads about people not paying and they recommended small claims court. Would this be the case too?If so how do I proceed with it? Regards

I know this is going to be a long post but i would be so so greatful for any advice anyone can give me here. I dont really know where to start without getting complicated. so here goes.. I moved in with my boyfriend 4 years ago. We have a 3 yaer old and 6 month old. I have not worked since moving in with my boyfriend. My boyfriend is a cab driver, has been for 10 years i think, before that he was a carer for his wife for 2 years and he had several office and shop jobs before that. In november 2009 his licence ran out and he couldnt afford the £300 to renew it straight away so he was on job seekers for 6 weeks while waiting for his licence to come through( someone lent him some money to pay for it) Whilst he was on job seekers we started claiming tax credits and housing benefit, we hadnt claimed any before that. And obviously he started getting working tax credits when he told them hed started work. Thats been the situation since. Now before we were getting tax credits we were in a lot of trouble with money i didnt realise it til jan 2010 we got a hmrc (or hmcs???) bailiff knock on the door and force her way past me when my first baby was 5 months old he hadnt paid a speeding fine and he now owed £1200!!!!! we scraped together every penny we had and fortunatly he had some very good friends so we managed to pay her. After that incident he showed me a sports back full of debt letters that he had kept in his car!!! i had no idea!!! we owed money for electric, gas, water. council tax,!! he also owes money on a credit card from 7 years ago, 2 provident loans and a dwp from 9 years ago, several parking tickets because he couldnt afford the parking permit to park down our road and another speeding fine. the only thing hed been affording to pay was the rent. now 3 and a half years later i thought we were finally getting somewhere!! we've still got gas debt which is taken bit by bit from the meter they installed, we still owe water. we have 1 payment left on the council tax. He still owes the provident loans and someof his barclay card debt. But we were getting somewhere. We dont have many nice things we have no wardrobes in our room our mattress is long past its expiry by date and we havent got an oven. Anyway... Yesterday i got back from taking out son to nursery and there was a letter from tax credits saying theyve selevcted our claim for review. They want all his self emplloyed information for last 3 months unique tax payer number etc etc, i was more concerned that his work stuff from start of this tax year is muddled up in a box as i havent had chance to sort through it with a new baby. However, my boyfriend then informed me that he does not have a unique tax payer number. I had no idea what it was til i had a look on the internet. He hasnt ever registered as being self employed! yet he has been for many years! how did he get away with it???? the only work stuff he has is 3 adn half years ago when i started recording it all on spreadsheets for him. ive looked further into personal allowances etc and as far as i can work out he hasnt earnt enough to pay taxes?? but he should have been paying national insurance contributions. I just never really thought about it i just presumed hed done whatever needed doing when he first became self employed. So what should he do???????? i dont know where to start. should he apply for the unique tax payer number? and tell them when he started all those years ago or when he started from the records of his work we have? should we phone tax credits and admit he doesnt have a unique tax number? Will they stop our tax credits, we really do rely on them i dont know what we'll do without them. I am so scared!! and because the tax credits is in joint names am i going to be in trouble too. am i going to be dragged away by police and my children put in care. I am so worried i cant eat or sleep i just feel physically sick! Thank you so much for reading this and any advice at all will be greatfully recieved!!! He isnt a bad person he works 6.30 til 4.30 5 days a week, before the tax credits he worked 7 days a week. I know he hasnt paid taxes but atleast he hasnt been scrounging on the dole whilst working???