Job Seekers Allowance

Hi All,

I have recently been made redundant from a role I held for many a long year.

There was a significant redundancy payment which arose from this (circa 100k).

I am currently in a pickle as to what to do.

I am aware that if I receive Job Seekers Benefit for 1 year, I then become means tested to receive Job Seekers Allowance. As my redundancy payment and my other assets are above the €20,000 limit for assets, I am wondering how best to proceed.

An acquantance of mine suggested that I gift the majority of these assets to my son. He explained that by doing so I could bring my assets under the €20,000 limit and so claim Job Seekers Allowance. He further explained that because the assets are below the gift threshold to a child that there would be no gift tax payable, and that this arrangement was entirely legitimate (i.e. tax avoidance rather than tax evasion).

As such I was wondering if the above is correct? If I was to proceed with this is it true that the social welfare office could not take these assets into account, as they are no longer my assets, when assessing myself for Job Seekers Allowance. I am worried that if I were to do this they would take the fact that I had gifted these assets to my son into account, when assessing myself, even though it is entirely legitimate to transfer these assets to him (up to balance circa €416k).

Hope someone can shed some light on this situation.

Thanks for your help.

Nidot

Are you entitled to claim jobseekers benefit? Have you been paying an A class stamp? If you have then you are entitled to claim JSB for 312 days but if your redundancy payment was over €99.999 and your are less than 55 years of age there is a 9 week disqualification period. In order to avoid the disqualification period do not make your claim until 9 weeks after you have ceased employment. JSA is means tested and the social welfare inspector will look for bank account details and will also ask what happened to your redundancy payment so at the end of your JSB entitlement you will have to account for how that was disposed of.

Thanks eastbono.

That still leaves me wondering about how the social welfare would regard me transferring the assets, i.e. The redundancy payment to my son.

By the way yes I am entitles to claim as I paid class A prsi for the last number of years. No real issues with that regard.

Hope someone can clarify the above.

Thanks

Nidot

Eastbono - waht is the advantage of avoiding the 9 week disqualification period by not claiming for 9 weeks after being made redundant?

The term of a JSB is 312 days from the date you make your claim. If you have a disqualification period and register your claim on the date you are made unemployed you will not get paid for the period of disqualification and therefore you not have a full 312 days e.g. if you have a 9 week disqualification period you will not receive any payment for 54 days reducing your payment period on JSB to 258 days. If you do not make your claim until after the disqualification period(disqualification period is tapered depending on the amount of redundacy one receives and people over 55 are exempt) then your JSB will be 312 days.

Gee thanks for that. I'm currently being made redundant and was going to sign straight away. So now I'd better not sign on until my weeks as determined by my lump sum run out. Do you know if the lump sum basis is before or after tax?
Thanks Again

To the best of my knowledge it is before tax. You can find the relevant disqualification period for you lump sum on welfares website.

read the keypost thread and then put proper title on querty and come back with any O/S queries

Welfarite
Don’t understand your post or O/S. Anyway I checked keypost again and in your post of Nov 2008 you don’t say whether it’s before or after tax. Perhaps you can clarify please?

Hi welfarite,

Any chance you'd be able to clarify on the original query, on whether or not the welfare officer would be able to take assets I have gifted to my son into account when calculating my entitlement to job seekers allowance after the original 312 days run out.

Thanks

Nidot