ABSTRACT
JSA, either income based or contribution based, has replaced IS and unemployment benefit for most people. Sole parents with dependent children are not required to sign on for work to claim JSA and receive IS instead; working families receive WFTC if one or more dependent children live with a working family (which may be a single person or a couple) whose income is below the threshold despite being in work. IS and JSA have valuable passport benefits, including payment of mortgage interest, but WFTC does not, so the claimant for WFTC must assess whether it is worth working more than the hours permitted while still eligible to claim IS, for fear of falling into the ‘poverty trap’. IS/JSA and WFTC are mutually exclusive benefits, depending on how many hours per week the claimant works, unless the claimant does not work at all, when IS/JSA will be appropriate. IS/JSA are calculated according to a formula based on the needs of the claimant, and claimant’s partner and family, according to a framework of premiums to produce and ‘applicable amount’ in each case. There are certain income disregards, and capital limits requiring deductions to be made from the amount paid, culminating in no IS/income based JSA at all over a capital ceiling of £8,000, and tariff reductions between £3,000 and £8,000.
