Benefits question confusion - are Christmas Gifts income?

Urbenmyth

I've been looking this up and I've got, like, 5 different answers. I know they count as capital if they're large enough (they're not), but I wanted to know if they were income.

The main answer I've been getting is "no", but I've heard a few people say it might do and one person say any bank transfer counts as unearned income for universal credit, which seems to be not the case but would be very worrying if it was.

Anyone who knows what they're talking about know what's going on?

poppy123456

Gifts such as money are never treated as income or unearned income, they are treated as capital. If your total capital is less than £6,000 it is disregarded anyway.

The person that advised you that bank transfers such as this are treated as unearned income is incorrect.

Unearned income would be things like New style ESA/JSA, Carers allowance, Pensions etc and those would be deducted in full from any UC entitlement.

Urbenmyth

https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/957670#Comment_957670

Ok, this seems to be the consensus, so maybe I should stop listening to weird advice from internet strangers :P

Thank you!

poppy123456

https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/957836#Comment_957836

Now that's something I can't disagree with 😊

tysoncortwright9

I checked this before because I was worried about how gifts might affect my benefits. From what I found, one-off Christmas gifts, whether cash or physical items, aren’t counted as income for means-tested benefits. If you're getting a lot regularly, that might be different. By the way, I use nixplay.com to send and receive digital photo frames with family, which is a great way to share memories without worrying about any financial impact.