Maternity benefit/pay confusion.

[sb118]

Hopefully somebody here can help me, i'm somewhat confused by the paperwork/info regarding maternity payments.

 

Our current situation is that my wife works 16 hrs a week at a takeaway @ minimum wage. I am disabled and in receipt of medium level DLA. We have one child together (6 years old). We get HB, CTB (currently paying off £1500 from when i didn't fill out the benefit paperwork correctly a few years ago), WTC, CTC, DLA & my wife gets carers allowance (for putting up with me!)

 

We've looked at the info for when she goes on maternity leave, but we're not sure how it works out.

 

From what i can understand she won't get maternity pay from her employer as she is under the threshold for employers payments (16 hrs @ min wage seems to be about £3/week under the threshold), so we've mention of getting a form SMP1 signed by her employer, but in the pamphlet we have it says her average wage should be around £30, whereas she earns just under £100.

 

If she gets whatever this other benefit is, how does it effect the WTC & CTC amounts we recieve?

 

Many thanks.

 

 

ps, quite annoying that they've dropped some of the maternity grant stuff, we didn't know the £500 maternity & £200 healthy eating things existed last time around, this time around they've been stopped! argh!

[citizenB]

Hello sb, I dont understand the way they work these things out.. but know a person who does and will bring your thread to their attention.

 

[Nystagmite]

If she's not entitled to SMP, she may be entitled to maternity allowance. http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/BenefitsTaxCreditsAndOtherSupport/Expectingorbringingupchildren/DG_10018869

[leemack]

The SMP1 is required for her to claim maternity allowance (MA) as nystagmite suggests. This form basically says that the employer can't pay smp and why - the earnings threshold for this year is £102 a week. She will need to get a maternity allowance claim form and send in her highest 13 weeks of pay slips within the stipulated time period. In order to claim MA she needs to be earning at least £30 a week, I believe, so she should be fine.

 

When calculating income for tax credits for the year, if the MA is less than £100 a week, then it should not be included as income. If this means that income declared will be less this tax year than last, then work out predicted income for the year and let HMRC know, who can base the tax credits award on this year rather than last - possibly meaning an increase in tax credits. If your wife is the only one working she will continue to get working tax credits while getting MA. If she doesn't return to work, WTC entitlement will then cease and HMRC will need to be notified.

[sb118]

Many thanks for the quick relies.

 

Been doing some more reading (link follows link follows link with this stuff!) and it looks like she'll lose the Carers Allowance but might be entitled to a Carer Premium....?

 

They couldn't make it straight forward could they!

[Nystagmite]

If she has an underlying entitlement to carers allowance, she would get the carers premium within income based benefits.

[sb118]

Ahh, right, thanks.

 

Looks like we won't be too much worse off while she's off work then.

 

(wish they'd take the number of kids into account in a different way, my eldest lives here 4 days a week, but spends 4 nights with my ex, meaning she doesn't exist in this family on "official" paperwork, makes budgeting fun!)

[sb118]

Just to update this, she's just started her maternity leave, the maternity allowance is coming through @ £85.40/week.

 

BUT the carers allowance has effectively stopped due to the "overlapping benefit" rule, so we contacted the DWP to change over to the carers premium and it turns out we need to make an Income Support claim!

 

Haven't dealt with this many separate departments in years!

[Nystagmite]

There's a 4 week run-on for WTC - that would take you over the amount for IS. Although, I'm sure the rules for WTC and maternity leave are different.

[sb118]

Oh hell yeah, we'll need to update the working tax credit people, which in turn will knock on to other stuff we get.

 

Good job everything is so straight forwards!

[leemack]

You may not qualify for income support, it will depend on how much working tax credit you get.

[sb118]

I know, hoping that the carers premium might be an extra variable in the equation though.

 

Instead of being £8-£9 a week down (maternity allowance 90%, etc), we're currently £63 a week down (no carers allowance), the budget is going to need some fine tuning!