How George Osborne’s Minimum Wage Rise Will Mean Brutal Benefit Cuts For The Self-Employed | the void

[Image: ONS.]

[Image: ONS.]

Plans to raise the minimum wage will mean a brutal benefit cut for the lowest earning self-employed workers due to complex changes to in-work benefits.

When Universal Credit is fully introduced (stop laughing) then anybody who is self-employed will be subject to the ‘Minimum Income Floor’.  What this means is that when calculating in-work benefits, such as Tax Credits and Housing Benefit, the DWP will assume a level of income regardless of how much the self-employed worker is actually earning.  For most people this means that the rate of benefits they receive will be based on them earning the equivalent of the minimum wage for 35 hours a week.  This will apply even if they earnt nothing at all that month, potentially plunging people hundreds of pounds into rent arrears just because they’ve had a bit of a slow period.

So, as George Osborne is well aware, any rise in the Minimum Wage will prove devastating for the self-employed if they are not able to constantly improve their earning to keep up.  Instead of it being an employer’s duty to pay the Minimum Wage, for the self-employed at least, it will be the worker’s duty to earn it.  Failure to do so will mean an effective cut to vital housing benefits as well as the replacement for Tax Cedits.

For five years the Tories have been happily encouraging low paid, precarious self-employment, not least because it helps bring the unemployment figures down.  Companies running the Work Programme have been handed pay-outs worth thousands of pounds in some cases everytime they encourage someone on the dole to become self-employed.  And now, having used a bogus fall in unemployment to help them win an election, the Tory Party are setting out to destroy this socially engineered entrepreneurship.

Source: How George Osborne’s Minimum Wage Rise Will Mean Brutal Benefit Cuts For The Self-Employed | the void

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

3 thoughts on “How George Osborne’s Minimum Wage Rise Will Mean Brutal Benefit Cuts For The Self-Employed | the void

  1. Mr.Angry

    The “GREAT TORY LIE” and on it goes. There is going to be total anarchy in this country, you can feel it brewing like a gigantic pressure cooker the steam starting to escape. The true feelings of people could be witnessed in yesterday march in Manchester.

    The people there did not include less fortunate down trodden individuals who had neither the means, finances or the strength to get there.

    This bunch are pushing people to the limit and they know it, hence the roof snipers.

    1. Joanna

      They are pushing people Beyond the limit!! and possibly to prison, or at least with huge fines and court costs, they will be in debt for the rest of their lives!!!!

  2. Joan Edington

    So, even more cuts for those folk who have been told to say they are self-employed so that they can claim tax-credits rather than job-seekers.

Comments are closed.