[Swannie]

Don't you believe it!

You do need to pay tax (and national insurance contributions) on income in the UK as a student. Unless that has changed in the last 5 years!

The confusion comes from a couple of reasons:
- most students working 1 day a week will earn under the £5,400/year tax free threshold and pay no tax.
- many students work summer jobs, during which they sign a form stating they are a student, and will not earn more than the £5,400 threshold during the rest of the year - so don't pay tax, even though they are earning more than the weekly/monthly threshold (e.g. £104/week)

So you would be earning less than the threshold on £96/week.

Regards to the maintainance grant, I assume that is based on the idea that your parents earn less than the £20,000/year amount. I'm fairly sure they won't accept you moving out on your own to claim that amount.


I hope you've talked with your parents about this. You should point out that by doing this you will be saving them money. Money that they could be putting in an account for your degree. I don't expect they would agree to paying you directly the money they save.

I'd expect their primary concern to be that working 16 hours a week will make it hard to concentrate properly on your studies.

During my A-levels I was working 10.5 hours a week. I felt I had to quit in the April before my exams because I'd been slowly slipping behind. I'd get home from work on Sat and Sun and be physically tired, not wanting to do much more than chill out.

I think it is great that you want to move out and are doing the sums to get there. However, don't underestimate the value of doing exactly as you planned, but living at home and having £8k or so in the bank when you start Uni...

Also you are highly likely to want to pay for things like driving lessons, a car, car insurance, a nice holiday away with your mates next summer... which your current budget would restrict.