Do you have to pay back jobseekers benefit / allowance when you return to work?

blue note

I've just gone back to work after being on jobseekers benefit / allowance for 4 months and have received an amended statement of tax credits. It is showing adjusted tax credits and SRCOP that will cost me about 4k over the course of the year, pretty much exactly what I received in payments.

Is this right? Was it effectively a loan I received from the state while I was not working?

Cherry Blossom

Your tax credits and cut off point are for a full year so if you are unemployed for a period you are not entitled to tax credits or cut off point for that period so these are adjusted to reflect the period you were unemployed. You are not required to repay jsb. Unless you are making a lot of money it won't affect the money you get into your hand. You just aren't getting allowances for the period you weren't at work, that's all.

blue note

Hmm, I'll give them a call. What you suggest might be the root of it, but it doesn't all make sense to me.

Firstly, I'd have expected it to apply to the same tax year? Whereas this has carried forward to 2020. That makes a big difference to be. Reducing my scrop by 10k in 2019 doesn't have much of an impact on me. Doing it I'm 2020 will cost me about 2k more.

Secondly, the figures don't add up. My scrop is reduced by 27% and tax credits by 60%. And is it right that the single person would be reduced as well as the PAYE tax credit?

They issued this amended cert this morning and seem to have put me on a week 1 tax basis too, so I wonder is this it. Or maybe I'm still registered as unemployed, so that's blocking me from receiving full allowances. I assumed adding an employer would remove me from being unemployed, but thinking about it that might not be a fair assumption.

Thanks for he reply though!

zepman

Gosh! I'm in almost the exact situation today and I posted it in detail in the Taxation forum - https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=112387967

Basically, was on JB from September to December 2019, and then the first 10 days of this month (January 2020). Tax cert got amended to what I expected when I registered my new job last week. But then it was amended again this morning with credits and cut-off significantly reduced by "DSP Jobseeker's Benefit".

I'm struggling to make sense of it since the same reductions were already applied in my wife's amended 2019 tax cert (we're jointly assessed) by the end of September. I'm confused.

How did you get on after ringing Revenue?

Dial Hard

Until Revenue receive the actual final figure of JSB you received from DSP once your claim is completely closed (which can take up to two months after you sign off), they work on the basis that you received the full years' worth of payments and reduce your tax credits accordingly. It's an automated thing. If you give them a ring and explain they're normally very good at adjusting your credits back there and then.

zepman

Dial Hard wrote: »

Until Revenue receive the actual final figure of JSB you received from DSP once your claim is completely closed (which can take up to two months after you sign off), they work on the basis that you received the full years' worth of payments and reduce your tax credits accordingly. It's an automated thing. If you give them a ring and explain they're normally very good at adjusting your credits back there and then.

Thank you! Just got off the phone with Revenue and was basically told this. So, it's not something as dire as I had initially thought.

But my credit/rate band were not adjusted during the call. It will only happen once they receive all the information from DSP, which is fair. I could ring DSP and ask them to send it on (which is what the lady from Revenue advised me to do), but I'm not sure if that would expedite things.

zepman

So I contacted DEASP this afternoon and they confirmed that my claim was closed in January.

I was told that they send out files to Revenue each day and mine should have gone right after my claim was closed, so it might be just that they haven't gotten around to updating my record because of the busy time of the year.

I didn't want to play the waiting game, so got on to Revenue right after. This time, the lady I spoke to simply updated my credits right then and there, and I didn't even have to mention that I spoke with DEASP.