options available to me - thinking of working for myself on JSA at the moment

Hi everyone,

I'm currently on JSA, have been for about 8 months now. I previously worked as a web designer before this. I've been approached by 2 seperate people looking for me to design sites for them. I gave them a price and said I needed a deposit before I could do this, and both guys handed me cheques there and then. Now obviously I haven't cashed them because I am receiving JBA.

My question is what are my options now? I'm very interested in working for myself doing this full time but although I have these to sites lined up which would tide me over into january, I'm worried that I may not have enough to keep me going after that. I've enquired about the back to work enterprise allowance which would be absolutely ideal for me, but I've not been signing on long enough to qualify for it. What other options are available to me?

i'm also curious of the tax implications of cashing these cheques?

I would really appreciate any help and advice anyone can give me regarding this.

thanks

You should declare your potentisl self-employent to SW who will assess the potential profit as income against your JA

percent of time

I believe if you say you'll be working 1 day a week you'll get 80% of your JSA...you'll only be paid the proportion of the week that you say you're not working...I'm fairly sure that's what happend to Mr Wishbone. And it doesn't matter if you're earning anything or not. The time spent 'working' will be deducted.

thanks for your help, went into the dole office today, guy inisde there wrote out a note saying I was starting temporary self employment and that I would be assessed again so I'll see how things go from here. Any advice as to what my next step should be? i'm looking through what I need to do need, particularly regarding tax