Where Does It Go? - UK Money Blog £

I keep meeting self employed people who haven’t heard of this scheme - which is a real shame as its brilliant. 

Basically the motive is to make it worthwhile for people to work - a lot of Tory propaganda in the 80s was aimed at the council estate single parent mum who had loads of kids to get benefits - it was more worthwhile to do that than to actually work. 

Tax Credits seek to correct that by making it more worthwhile to work - if you qualify you get a weekly or monthly payment to bump up your earnings.

If you work more than 30 hours (16 for parents) and earn less than roughly £15,000 - you qualify.

For self employed people this is even more attractive as the costs of the business as taken into account - only actual profit counts against the earnings.

My brother took on tax credits after many urgings from me when he was a musician in Cornwall - after arranging his NI contributions (£10 a month), he got in contact with tax credits - he sent in evidence of his work hours, a diary of jam practices and gigs, along with promotion posters, and recieved the tax credits within 6 weeks of roughly £45 a week.  Not enough to retire on sure, but worth enough to cover petrol getting around. 

One other thing to note is even if this year you are earning over the threshold, Tax credits works on the last tax year up to April - so if you earn £20,000 this year but only £6000 the year before - you may qualify.

Resources:

HM Revenue And Customs Info on Tax Credits

CAB Self Employment Checklist

Tags: taxcredits, budget tips, self employed

I moved into my new house, and had to go through the ordeal of arranging a phone line with broadband.  Telecommunication companies have to be the worst public services I’ve ever faced - BT, Tiscali and Wanadoo have all raised my blood pressure on several occasions. (Check out some of these BT complaints)

Today I resigned myself to being passed around from call centre to call centre as they tried to sort out my issue - I had been charged £120 more than I expected in my latest phone bill for a very unspecific “one off charge”.  I swear blind I remember the BT engineer when I spoke to him had said I shouldn’t be charged at all for connection.

After explaining this three times to various call centre staff, my exasperation was rewarded with a £60 credit on my bill. The connection issue according to the final TSR had stopped being policy several months ago. Nice for them to tell me; my first warning of connection charge at all was the bill.  When I explained I had been passed around by four call centre staff before finally speaking to him, and “my mate in Truro worked for BT and said I’d get it for free” he gave me the discount to save me lodging a complaint.

Moral?  Always communicate with companies - remember they want your money but the staff are human beings.  I tried to not be a prick when talking to the call centre staff, and just firmly and calmly pointed out my grievances each time I spoke with a member of staff, lodging complaints as soon as my expected level of service wasn’t reached. 

Tags: BT, complaints, discount, budget tips