Weekly wages and the UC benefit cap.

A claimant finds work at £100 per week - is she exempt from the UC cap (via reg 82 - earning £430/assesment period) or not?

Presumambly the correct answer is “some months:yes, other months:no.”

It might seem so.

Reg. 73 lays down rules for converting other income to monthly;

“Where the period in respect of which a payment of income is made is not a month, an
amount is to be calculated as the monthly equivalent, so for example—
(a) weekly payments are multiplied by 52 and divided by 12;
(b) four weekly payments are multiplied by 13 and divided 12;
(c) three monthly payments are multiplied by 4 and divided by 12; and
(d) annual payments are divided by 12.”

but not earnings.

It’s also interesting to note the 52 and 12 factors. 

If you look at how the equivalent allowances are worked out.  If you use 52 and 12 then you get £77.90 for the UC weekly equivalent of a single allowance of £77.70 in JSA.  You do though get 77.70 if you multiply by 12 divide by 365 and multiply by 7.

There is, of course, no need for an earnings conversion rule because HMRC will be passing a monthly figure across to DWP.  What they pass across, in terms of Jon’s question, is obviously going to magically solve all problems.

Exactly : no equivalent of reg 73 for earned income.

Monthly payment of UC is bad enough but monthly *assessment*  (for weekly paid earners) would seem be almost as stupid.

Assuming this really is what’s intended there there will be some weekly paid claimants who qualify for UC in 4-pay-day months but not in 5-pay-day months : what would happen to any transitional addition in these cases?

For the majority of council tax reduction schemes any 4 x weekly (or 5 x weekly) earnings figure used for UC in each assessment period would have to be reapportioned from month to month on a 52/12 basis - this would partly offset the ‘lumpiness’ of 4/weeks-pay and 5/weeks-pay UC but could make for rather complicated CTR notifications.