Working Tax Benefit Calculator

Comment on Economic Austerity by David Law.

No problem, don’t forget I’m one of the people who has spent time on benefits for medical reasons, it took a couple of years after leaving University to come to the hard fact I wasn’t going to be able to go back to University to finish my degree and continue with my career plans.

My plan was to leave Uni for a year, get my back fixed and go back to finish my degree… Two years later my back was worse and there was no way I could work a 9-5 job! I had a choice of living on benefits probably until I died! or go self employed and learn new skills to provide for my family.

So I know the vast majority of those who are in need (like we were) are not trying to milk the system and want to get on in life under difficult circumstances. What I want to see is more help for people like me who want to get on, but for whatever reason are having problems.

It’s not easy living on benefits, but then it’s not meant to be easy living on benefits. Whether it’s medical reasons like it was for me or hard economic times for many now, I can not believe families with both adults unemployed who care about their kids that neither of the adults want to work. Of course there’s a small minority who do take full advantage of the system, but they are a minority and it’s the majority of hard working people that the welfare system is there to help in times of need.

When I decided to go self employed I didn’t think to ask for help, so I don’t personally know how good/bad the system is for people who want to get off benefits via self employment. I wrote an article about going self employed and working tax credit and a commenter (Charlotte) said she was fobbed off when she asked about going self employed.

During Job Center type interviews unemployed people should be encouraged to look into starting their own business and explained how working tax credits work, it’s got to be better for the country to support potential new entrepreneurs than paying benefits for people to do nothing.

Do you know the money your hypothetical average family (2 adults, 2 kids) would receive if one of the adults started a business and in the first year earned £500 working full time?

There’s a working tax benefits calculator at I plugged in 2 adults, 2 kids, one adult employed earning £500 a year and no to most question (no disability, no child care costs) and the figure came out as £795.00 a month (£182.96 a week) with over half related to the kids. Add to that housing and council tax benefit and it’s £1,300+ a month.

That sounds comparable to unemployment type benefits.

My first 6 months self employed I made a ~£500 loss (cost of a PC), so survived completely on the equivalent of working tax credit (first full year, April to March, made a good profit).

David Law