Claiming benefits between contracts

[Churchill]

Eh? Unless I'm still p1ssed from the continuous 4 day drinking binge I've been on, from your message I gather that:
- You're permie
- You earned £16k last month and hence paid £6.5k in tax

Xmas bonus time.

[IR35 Avoider]

I signed on once.

I told them my exact situation (company director of one-man company, no work, no money in company account.) They let me sign on for seven months. Think I might have had to get P45 from accountant. Far from forcing me to get work as a data-entry clerk, their pamphlet stressed that they wanted me to find similar employment to my previous one. Not only did I get the £50 a week (or whatever) - they paid my mortgage for a while as well. In order to qualify for the latter I had to have little savings. I wrote them a letter explaining that I had 10-20K in shares in unlisted companies, which I could not sell easily, and under the rules the difficulty of selling meant those savings did not count. (The unlisted companies were "Business Expansion Scheme" investments, which I'd put my savings into in order to get the 40% tax-relief on offer.)

That was 1991 though. The rules have changed since then. In particular, people with large mortgages no longer get help. There was outrage in the early 90s when some guy with a 450K mortgage was getting his interest paid, and they brought in a limit saying income support would not pay out if the mortgage was over 100K. My mortgage was 120K, so even two or three years after I claimed I would no longer have been eligible for what I got, due to rule changes.

I worked out that I would have to be paid well over 20K to be better off working than on benefits. (At the time my flat was worth 40K less than the mortgage though, so even if it was in my personality to be work-shy, the threat of repossession and bankruptcy would have been enough to motivate me.)

Even at the time, I realised I was very lucky to pass all the tests to qualify. There were so many rules which would have disqualified me had my circumstances been the slightest bit different from what they were.

[AtW]

There were so many rules which would have disqualified me had my circumstances been the slightest bit different from what they were.

It's funny how it is almost impossible to avoid paying NI, yet claiming money you paid is also impossible. There is something fundamentally wrong in such an arrangement.