kcrussell25:
Tax credits were designed to make it worth working part time as if not the loss of benefits for being unemployed but not full time wasn’t worth part time jobs. Much like universal credit is trying to do.The issue became that people realised you could do a part time job for full time wages there’s no point in working full time or even doing overtime as it goes off your benefits
I agree. The reason Universal Credit has had such poor press though - is that the long-term job dodgers - are finding it hard to justify staying on benefits and not working at all in the new regime. 
Tax Credits and UC - encourage people to get a job - ANY job, which ends up paying as much as a full time well-paid job, once the top up is given, and low deductions are made from the job’s pay.
I tried to make use of this about 4-5 years ago, but fell foul of some rules that flip any tax credits already received during a low-paid year in retrospect - into a LOAN that must be re-paid, once I took a full time job paying well over minimum wages… BEFORE the end of that same financial year. FFS how is one supposed to state “I definately won’t have a better paid job before 31st March”. Even THIS year of all years - there’s few people that could make that statement, I would have thought?!
I was asked to re-pay tax credits for the previous 18 months, but I told them they could whistle for the money, as it was not contracted to me that the tax credits I’d received were a Loan. I never heard any more about it from the tax office dealing with it, although previously, they were known to re-claim such amounts via one’s personal tax code.
I would imagine there will eventually be a lot of Students who end up doing something similar (taking a low paid job for a while, and finally getting a better paid one) where they hope to get their student loan written off during the “hard-up period”… Student Loans - are not repayable all the while you are holding down a job on minumum wage apparently…