dole reduced

cytex

hi I have been attending college and getting beta. however i received a letter this week saying i have been assessed a means of 59 euro and the are talking that amount from my dole.

i own my own house and am renting a room which i have been doing all year and declared this. so does anybody know where this 59 euro means is suddenly coming from. i simply can't live on 129 a week it doesn't even cover my mortgage. before this i had 20 euro a week for shopping. is there anything i can do about this decision.

mp22

When did you get means tested?
You can appeal this see here http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/social_welfare/irish_social_welfare_system/social_welfare_appeals.html

cytex

Many thanks mp22 . I was talking to the decision officer and pressed him to show me the math he used in coming up with the amount and when pressed he couldn't give the math so they are now in the process of reviewing the amount. I have asked for him to deal with me through email so I have a record and I will wait till monday for him to sort it out then lodge a formal appeal if he doesn't.

Any other advise on what else I can be doing will be much appreciated.

cytex

just would like to get peoples opinion on this the rules for the means test of a house share are as follows :

property partly occupied by the claimant :

any cash income from the portion of a house that is not personally used or enjoyed is assessable against the claimant as income .

If a portion of the house is being let or is being used for business purposes the following should apply. Deductions from profits should be allowed in respect of ground rent and mortgage interest (not the full amount of the loan repayment) in proportion to the area used for business purposes .

If rooms are let furnished , 5% of the gross amount received are allowed for wear and tear and 15%of the gross receipts maybe allowed for voids

The bold bit my empathise does this mean only the tenant room is allowed to be deducted from mortgage interest or anywhere he has access to .

His room is about 25% of the property , the space I have to myself (ie he is not allowed in) is about 15%
does this mean I am allowed to claim 85% of the mortgage interest or 25% of it .

Just looking for peoples opinions on this on how it works as the wording I am having trouble with and think it means 85%

Stheno

cytex wrote: »

just would like to get peoples opinion on this the rules for the means test of a house share are as follows :






The bold bit my empathise does this mean only the tenant room is allowed to be deducted from mortgage interest or anywhere he has access to .

His room is about 25% of the property , the space I have to myself (ie he is not allowed in) is about 15%
does this mean I am allowed to claim 85% of the mortgage interest or 25% of it .

Just looking for peoples opinions on this on how it works as the wording I am having trouble with and think it means 85%

That's only for business purposes, the bit that applies to you is related to rooms being let and allowing 5% to be deducted and another 15% for voids

So 80% of the profit you make from renting is counted as income.

cytex

Stheno wrote: »

That's only for business purposes, the bit that applies to you is related to rooms being let and allowing 5% to be deducted and another 15% for voids

So 80% of the profit you make from renting is counted as income.

Hi stheno thank you for your reply .
The way they have done it is said that 50% of the house is upstairs and I have 3 bedrooms and they have divided 3/50 and gotten 16.66% of the house is used for the rental . So the space for business purposes does count .

The room is 25% of the house but the wording in that is incredibly sloppy.

So was just wondering from other people would it be 85% or 25% of the rental area based on that statement. Nobody in the social or myself is arguing that I don't get a reduction for the business space so not going to go bring that up !!

Really what Im trying to do is get any arguments that they could use so I am prepared for the meeting .

blatantrereg

Rent out another room, if you have it.

cytex

blatantrereg wrote: »

Rent out another room, if you have it.

If I rent out another room 100% of that income either way will be taken by the social and would put me in the position of losing the house or having to drop out of college or my dole would be completely cut so that would actually put me in a worse position than I am in now .

blatantrereg

cytex wrote: »

If I rent out another room 100% of that income either way will be taken by the social and would put me in the position of losing the house or having to drop out of college or my dole would be completely cut so that would actually put me in a worse position than I am in now .

Illustrative of a very broken system. BETA itself is very badly implemented. It encourages abstaining from work for a year if you are going to start college. (I knew one person who did exactly this.)
The money wouldn't be taken by social; they'd just stop giving you the equivalent amount. End result is equivalent though. Perhaps the logic behind the cut is that you could be getting this amount by renting out the room?

cytex

blatantrereg wrote: »

Illustrative of a very broken system. BETA itself is very badly implemented. It encourages abstaining from work for a year if you are going to start college. (I knew one person who did exactly this.)
The money wouldn't be taken by social; they'd just stop giving you the equivalent amount. End result is equivalent though. Perhaps the logic behind the cut is that you could be getting this amount by renting out the room?

The logic behind the cut is people cant do maths . The cut they have imposed on me is based of a mortgage interest that is not mine.
The area of rental which they just divided 50/3 to get the rental percent.
Then they took the 20% off the net .
This is why I am appealing .

I appreciate your comments but I have worked all of my life and got made redundant I spent a year and a half trying to get a new job before giving up and going to college to retrain if I could get a job I would jump on the chance but It is quite simply no job that I am qualified for so I am retraining so I can get back into gainful employment as quickly as I can .

Now this thread is going off topic It is not about me defending my situation on the dole or about the dole itself it is about the bolded text above and how it can be read or what I can claim on the rental on the mortgage interest of the rental income.

Msquack

Hi, has your dole just been reduced for the summer months? Are you returning to college in September? If you are on BTEA this cannot be means tested as far as I am aware. However during summer months you will be means tested for job seekers allowance if you are not working

cytex

Msquack wrote: »

Hi, has your dole just been reduced for the summer months? Are you returning to college in September? If you are on BTEA this cannot be means tested as far as I am aware. However during summer months you will be means tested for job seekers allowance if you are not working

Yep my dole got means tested going from beta to job seekers allowance .
This has been means tested before and they came up with nil income .
However this time they are coming up with 59 euro worth of a income .
When pressed they decision officer could not come up with the maths but assured me that the maths was correct . so I got the maths of him and as stated they were any thing but correct .

Yes I should be going into second year next year .

What I am querying is how much of the rental area is taken in to account the maths potion is easy to prove that they cant do It that alone takes 30 euro of the amount that they are deducting but if I can claim 85% I can then deduct the full rent from the mortgage interest . This is what I want to do but I am unsure if I am able to do that from the bolded text i quoted above. And that is what I am now asking advice on.