UC for self-employed: Earned Income Disregards for the Minimum Income Floor?

Hi all. Doing some research on Universal Credit for self-employed - I am trying to confirm whether the Minimum Income Floor (discussed elsewhere here, what a self-employed claimant is presumed to be earning at least in any month) is treated as earned income in terms of disregards. Sent below to DWP, but got nothing:

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UNIVERSAL CREDIT REGULATIONS 2012
Minimum income floor IC19
58.—(1) Where, in any assessment period, a claimant is in gainful self-employment and their earned income in respect of that period is below £… [amount/s to be determined], the claimant is assumed to have earned income equal to that amount.
(2) Paragraph (1) does not apply where—
(a) the assessment period falls within a start-up period; or
(b) the claimant falls within section 19 (claimants subject to no work-related requirements) section 20 (claimants subject to work focused interview requirement only) or section 21 (claimants subject to work preparation requirement only) of the Act.

Can you confirm, as the claimant is assumed to have earned income equal to the Minimum Income Floor, that the claimant’s income will then be subject to Earned Income disregards?

Thank you.
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Can anyone here shed any light on this? Or would know whom to contact in DWP about this?

It intuitively feels like the Floor SHOULD be subject to disregards, as it is presumed EARNED income, but this is not explicitly stated anywhere in the existing regulations to my knowledge. If the Floor is not disregarded, this would have massive negative implications for anyone earning beneath this.

This makes more sense if you remember that the earnings “disregards” in UC are strictly speaking not disregards as such: they are more like taper thresholds, doing a similar job to the Tax Credit thresholds or the HB applicable amount.

UC Reg 62(1) says “the claimant is to be treated as having earned income equal to the minimum income floor” and Reg 22(1) says the taper is “65% of the amount by which the claimant’s earned income ... exceeds the work allowance”.

So yes, the work allowance comes off the MIF and the taper is 65% of whatever is left.

Note as well that Reg 62 says the MIF should have an appropriate amount of tax and NI pre-deducted.  It’s not clear whether any personal pension contributions should be deducted from the MIF

Advice NI - 08 December 2015 03:05 PM

—-
UNIVERSAL CREDIT REGULATIONS 2012
Minimum income floor IC19
58.—(1) ...

For info: those were the old pre-draft ‘illustrative’ UC regulations (hence the mismatch in reg number) - the current UC regs are available here -

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/376/pdfs/uksi_20130376_310515_en.pdf

Work allowances will be reduced/removed from April 2016 -

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/1649/pdfs/uksi_20151649_en.pdf