How income affects your payments
Getting a job doesn't always mean your payments will stop. We're still here to help even when you're working. Your payments may be able to continue, and there may be other ways we can help out too.
Let us know you’re starting a job
Starting a new job is a great achievement, but it can be scary. We want to help you as much as we can, and make it easy for you to get off to a great start.
Get in touch with us before you start your new job. We'll sort out your payments from us and make sure you're getting everything you're entitled to. We'll also check if there's anything else we can do to help while you're starting out.
Call us on 0800 559 009 before you start your new job.
How much you can earn
You may be able to keep getting your benefit or payment even if you're working. This depends on:
- which benefit or payment you're getting, and
- how much you get paid for your job.
Our income deduction tables show how much income you can get before your benefit is affected:
Declare your income while you’re working
If you're getting payments from us while you're working, you need to declare your income so we can pay you the correct amount.
We need to know by Friday 6pm the week you earn the money (not the week you've been paid). If you're working the weekend, include the hours you think you’ll work. You can change it later if your hours change.
If your income and hours are the same every week, you only need to tell us once. The amount you declare will continue every week until you let us know it has stopped or changed.
The easiest way to tell us your income is through MyMSD:
Find out more about declaring wages, how to do this, and what happens after you've declared them:
If you can't use MyMSD
If you can't use MyMSD you can call us or come into one of our service centres.
If you’re declaring income from self-employment, make sure you mention you're self-employed.
Help while you're working
As well as checking whether your existing payments can continue, we may also be able to help with: