How To Maximise Your Benefits Entitlement

Hello, my name's Lee Healey, and I'm the managing director of Income Max, the entitlement experts. We help people to make sense of and understand the benefits and tax credits system. Today we are going to tell you lots about the benefits and tax credits available.

Here's a quick guide to maximising your tax credit and benefit entitlement. Now, the benefits and tax credits system is notoriously complex, it's a very very difficult system to get your head around if you haven't got experience of it, and you don't know what you're doing. So the best way to maximise your benefits and tax credit entitlement is to talk to an expert who knows about the benefit and tax credits system, and who can help you to make sense of it all.

A benefit and tax credit entitlement check can help put you in the picture as to what your benefit entitlement should be, and they can have a look at all of the different parts of benefits and tax credits that are available, so they can look and see if you are entitled to any contributory benefits, any non-contributory benefits and also any means tested benefits which you might be entitled to. So what does a benefit and tax credit entitlement check entail? Well, basically it involves looking at your circumstances and situation, your income, resources and savings to try and work out what benefits and tax credits you could be entitled to. Now, the benefits and tax credits system does obviously have a purpose, it is designed to help you work from a financial perspective, and of course it looks at your situation and circumstances to see how you might fit into the system and need that kind of extra help.

So perhaps you're a job seeker, perhaps you're a lone parent looking after children, perhaps you have disabilities or health problems or you've reached pension age, perhaps you need help with your rent or council tax or you're on maternity leave. There are lots of varied reasons why you might be able to claim benefits or tax credits. So by talking to an expert, they will be able to look at your circumstances and situations to see if you fit into the broad spectrum of benefits and tax credits available, and then they will be able to compare your income to different benefits and tax credits that are actually available.

So they will be able to do a means tested benefit check to see whether you are entitled to say, income support or pension credit or working tax credit, housing benefit and council tax benefit. An expert will be able to clearly explain this to you and they will be able to set down what your current entitlement is, and obviously if you are missing out on anything. If the adviser does actually work out that you're entitled to some more benefits or tax credits and you're missing out on them, then you can make the relevant claims.

So where should you go to get a benefit and tax credit entitlement check carried out? Well, you can contact your local citizens advice bureau, or an independent advice service that's got benefits experience in house. They should be able to have a good chat to you, look at your circumstances, look at your income and resources and try to work out what benefits and tax credits you can claim. And that's a quick guide to maximising your benefit and tax credit entitlement. .