A friend of mine is pregnant and is currently self employed with a income lower I believe to be lower than the threshold to pay class 2 stamps. She already has a child and so the remainder of her income comes from Tax Credits.
What is the best way to maximise her maternity allowances?
It's a long time since this situation occurred in my family but my wife paid voluntary class 2 (IIRC) NI contributions in order to receive MA. This may still be possible to do. The Tax/NI office even calculated when/how much the minimum my wife would need to pay in order to receive the allowance.
Yes - that was a route I had considered, but MA is only £30 per week for a max of 39 weeks. Though I don't understand the use of max and what would otherwise limit the duration of MA.
SMP sounded a whole lot better! Where you need to be paid an average above LEL for the first 25 weeks of the pregnancy and your income around week 15 before birth is assessed for SMP; where SMP is 90% of pay during that time.
I have no idea why these rules are made so complicated!!
We still ended up better off, even when considering the additional NI contributions.
IIRC SMP is not available to the self-employed but ICBW.
To discourage people claiming?
Her partner runs his own Ltd company so can massage her employed income to suit. I find it surprising the difference between allowances discriminate between employment and self-employment.
Hardly fair or right though.
Is she actually classed as self-employed?
Agreed.
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