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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Covid-19 issues  →  Thread

SEISS

roecab
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Welfare benefits supervisor - Roehampton CAB

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Total Posts: 465

Joined: 17 June 2010

Dear All,

How will income from the self employed income support scheme be assesed for housing benefit?

Thinking out loud

Is it just rolled into the net profit, and if that then is no longer reflective of there average they declare it?

If it is repalcing income, and it does not lead to an overcall increase in net profit then no action needed?

Thanks in advance?

Cheers

[ Edited: 16 Oct 2020 at 11:42 am by roecab ]
HB Anorak
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Benefits consultant/trainer - hbanorak.co.uk, East London

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The HB Regulations give the local authority very wide discretion over the assessment of self-employed earnings: they have to estimate what they think the climant’s earnings will be going forward by reference to a past period of no longer than one year, but not necessarily the most recent rolling year, it could for example be the last complete tax year for which accounts are available.

There are ups and downs, seasonal variations, random periods of feast and famine and the best way to average these is often the maximum period of one year.  But if something changes in a big way, so that the sample 12 month period is no longer likely to provide an accurate basis for an estimate, the Council might decide to look at a more recent and/or shorter period - they often take it three months at a time.

A lot of self-employed claimants will have reported decreased earnings compared with the previous year as a result of Covid and in many cases the Council will have reduced their estimate based on very recent activity in, say, February and March this year.  At that stage, the SEISS had not kicked in.  In those cases, receipt of the first SEISS payment would have been an obvious trigger to take a fresh estimate and there is a happy coincidence in that the SEISS is notionally intended to cover three months as well, which dovetails nicely with the traditional HB intervals when you want to keep a complex case on a short leash.  The exercise can then be repeated at three-monthly intervals as each tranche of SEISS is paid.

In other cases, the Council might have said “well, let’s leave it and see how things pan out by the end of the year - you’ve lost some earnings but you’ll be getting your SEISS - we’ll just factor it all into next year’s estimate”.

The only golden rules are:

- don’t double count: if next year’s expected earnings are not at full pre-Covid level and the SEISS has been taken into account during several short assessment periods already, it needs to be stripped out of next year’s estimate
- never go back, always adjust the estimate prospectively

roecab
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Welfare benefits supervisor - Roehampton CAB

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Total Posts: 465

Joined: 17 June 2010

Mr Anorak,

That is very useful, thank you.

Michael