Welcome to UI Online – your fast, convenient, and secure way to certify for continuing unemployment
benefits and manage your claim. In this video, we'll
demonstrate how to answer Question #6 on the claim certification in order to properly report
your earnings for self employment and commissions. In addition, if you work for the entertainment
industry or have regular earnings, you'll want to look at our other instructional videos
specific to these situations. In order to certify for continuing benefits using UI Online,
you first need to register in Benefit Programs Online and create a UI Online account.
If you haven’t created an account yet, or you need information on how to certify, please
see our other instructional videos for help with these topics.
Unemployment Insurance benefits are designed to provide partial wage replacement to unemployed
workers. So, if you're working less than full-time,
you may also be eligible for UI benefits in certain situations. Therefore, it’s important
to properly report all work and wages to the EDD to ensure that you receive the benefits
that you are eligible for. How is your benefit payment calculated?
The EDD uses the information that you provide during the certification process to determine
the amount and type of income that is deductible from your Weekly Benefit Amount. When you
report earnings, the EDD will use the criteria shown on this chart to calculate your payment.
In order to understand how to report self employment, we first need to identify what
self employment is. Generally, you are self employed if any of
the following apply to you: You carry on a trade or business as a sole proprietor or
as an independent contractor. You are a member of a partnership that carries
on a trade or business. You are otherwise in business for yourself (including a part-time
business). Most customers certify for continuing benefits two weeks at a time. If you have
multiple weeks that need to be certified, you'll start with the oldest week first. For
self employment, you must report your earnings on your certification for the weeks in which
the work was performed, regardless of when you actually get paid. Also, don't wait for
your payment to report your earnings. If you receive a payment for self employment, calculate
your earnings by dividing the contracted amount across the contracted time period.
For example, if you receive $1000 for self employment contract work which covered a one
month contract period (30 days), divide the contracted amount ($1000) by the total number
of days covered by the contract (30 days). This would give you approximately $33.33 of
earnings for each day of the contract. Use this amount to calculate your earnings for
each week by multiplying $33.33 (the estimated earnings for each day) by seven, the total
number of days in each week. On your claim certification, you would then enter $233.31
of earnings for each week. In cases where the contract period is not
defined, divide your payment over the time that you performed the work.
For example, you receive a payment of $500 for a project you worked on which took you
14 days to complete. Divide the amount of the payment by the number of days it took
you to complete the project. This would give you approximate earnings for each day you
worked on the project. Next, multiply this amount by seven to get your earnings for each
week. You would then report this amount for each week on your claim certifications.
With self employment, if you're making yourself unavailable for salaried, full-time work in
order to pursue your entrepreneurship, you'll need to answer "Yes" to Question #2 and report
this information to the Department. You only need to report this once during the benefit
year, or if you change your self employment or add additional self employment activity
since you last reported this information. Now that you know a little bit more about
how to report your self employment earnings, let's talk about commissions. A sales commission
is a sum of money paid to an employee upon completion of a task, usually for selling
a certain amount of goods or services. Some examples of industries where employees
may be paid a commission include: The auto industry, such as car sales, retail sales,
and real estate. A commission may be paid in addition to a salary or instead of a salary.
Employees who receive a commission will either know the amount in advance, before getting
paid, or as in most cases, won't know the amount until later, when they actually get
paid. For example, an employee always receives a $5 commission for every $100 of items sold.
In this case, the employee is considered to know the exact amount of commission she'll
receive, as long as she keeps track of the dollar amount of items she sells.
Here's another example, a real estate agent sells a property but won't know the exact
amount of his commission until escrow closes, and he receives his check. In this case, the
real estate agent is not considered to know the amount of his commission in advance.
This is important since when you know how much commission you'll receive (either in
advance, or not until getting paid), will determine on what week of your claim certification
you'll report this information. If you receive commission and you know the
amount of the commission up front, report the commissions on your claim certification
for the week in which they were earned. If the amount is unknown, report the commission
on your claim certification for the week in which you were paid.
Our benefit week is usually Sunday through Saturday. So, when reporting your earnings,
you must report your earnings on your claim certification for that time period only, for
each week. For example, on August 21st, you received a paycheck for commissions in the
amount of $300. This was for $200 of commission you received from sales during the first week,
August 2nd through August 8th, and $100 of commission you received from sales during
the second week, August 9th through August 15th.
If you know the amount of the commission you earned during each week (before actually getting
paid), you would report the commission on the claim certification for the week in which
they were earned, even though you're not actually paid until later. In this example, the $200
would be reported on the claim certification for the first week, and the $100 would be
reported on the claim certification for the second week, even though you're not actually
paid until the third week. Now that we've gone over what self employment and commissions
are, let's talk about how to enter the information using UI Online. This video focuses specifically
on how to answer Question #6 on UI Online to correctly report self employment or commissions.
Question #6 asks, "Did you work or earn any money, whether you were paid or not?" You
should answer "Yes" to Question #6 when you receive self employment or commission. After
selecting "Next," you'll be directed to the next screen where you will answer two follow-up
questions. By selecting "Yes" to Question #6, you've indicated that you need to report
income such as self employment or commissions. Answer “Yes” for the first question to
confirm that you've received any of the income listed. The second question refers to other
types of income, like the ones listed below it. Select "Yes" or "No" to indicate whether
or not you've received any of the income listed. If you received a type of income that doesn't
appear on either list, go ahead and select "Yes" for this question. On another screen,
you'll be given a list of some of the other options that may apply to you. After making
your selection, select "Next" to continue. Now we'll show an example of how to report
self employment using UI Online. When you select "Yes" to Question #6, “Did you work
or earn any money, whether you were paid or not?," and "Yes" to the first follow-up question,
you'll be asked additional questions on the "Work Details" screen, as shown here. Complete
the required fields indicated with an asterisk (*). To begin, enter your company's name and
address. For self employment, this could be your name and home address. Next, enter the
last day you worked for this employer during the week shown above. In this example, you
reported that you worked 12 hours during this week. To calculate your earnings, report your
net pay. This is your gross pay minus the costs, as defined by the IRS, associated with
self employment. Assuming you're self-employed, and you're contracted for $1000 for a week
of work, but you had costs to complete the project of $250, you would take $1000 minus
$250, which would give you your net earnings of $750. This is the only time that net pay
is reported to the EDD. Select your Wage Type. You would choose "Self Employment or Independent
Contract Work Pay." Select "Self Employment" for your employer type.
When answering the question, "Are you still going to work for this employer?," if you
are performing self employment ongoing, and you don't need any more claim certifications,
answer "Yes," if you've finished the job and need to continue collecting benefits, answer
"No." The next question asks, "What is your employment status?" In this example, you'll
select, "Still working part-time or on-call" if the project continues to be ongoing, or
"Laid off due to Lack of Work" if the project has ended and you won't be working at the
moment. Enter additional details about your employment status. For this question, answer
"Yes" if you would have been willing to change or stop your self-employment to accept full-time
work during the week. Answer “No” if you would not have been
willing to stop or change your self-employment to accept full-time employment. In this example,
this box is left unchecked since you are not working full-time and would like to continue
to receive benefits. Select "Yes" or "No" to answer the question, "Do you have any additional
employers to report for this week?" Selecting "Yes" will direct you to a similar screen
for each employer you worked for. For example, if you have an Avon side business
but also work for another employer part-time, you would answer "Yes," so that you could
record the information for both employers, your self employment, and your part-time employer.
Be careful to only provide the amount of earnings you received for the week indicated. After
entering all information for your self employment, you would then select "Next" to continue.
But first, before we continue, let's go over how to report a commission.
Reporting a commission is similar to reporting self employment. You'll even use this same
screen. For this example, we'll just highlight the differences. When you report commission,
you'll enter the actual name and address of the employer who's paying your commission.
When entering the amount of your commission, report the gross amount received, or anticipated,
if known in advance. When selecting your wage type, select commissions. Also, be sure to
select your correct "Employer Type." The most common type of employer is "Private Sector
Employer." When entering additional details about your income, enter details specific
to your commission, such as the week the commission was earned, if the amount of your commission
is unknown in advance. Other than the sections we just highlighted for you, the rest of this
screen should be completed in the same way as for reporting self employment.
After entering all the information for your commission, select "Next" to continue. You’re
almost done. Once you answer all the certification questions, it’s time to review your answers
for accuracy. Please read the Acknowledgement section below. If everything is correct, select
the Acknowledgement check box, at the bottom of the page, and enter your ZIP code. Checking
the box and entering your ZIP code also serves as your electronic signature indicating you
have read and understood the Acknowledgement statement. Customers who make false statements
or withhold information are punishable by law and could be subject to penalties, including
being denied UI benefits, in addition to having to pay back any amount that you were not entitled
to receive with a 30% monetary penalty. If you need to make changes to any of the answers,
simply select the “Previous” button to go back to any of the previous screens. When
you’re ready, select “Submit." Selecting “Submit” finalizes and completes the certification
process for those weeks. You are done! You have successfully submitted your certification
to the EDD when you see this screen with your confirmation
number. You should save this number for your reference
or select the “Confirmation” link to print a copy for your records.
If you have additional weeks that are available to be certified, click the “Return to Certify
for Benefits” button to repeat the process. If you feel that you have reported incorrect
information on the claim certification, just send a message to the EDD through your UI
Online account by selecting the “Contact Us” link at the top of the screen.
Be sure to specify the week, amount reported, and correct amount. We hope you have found
this video helpful on how to properly report your self employment and commission earnings
in a fast, convenient, and secure way online. Additional information about this topic is
available on our EDD website. We also invite you to view our other instructional videos
that are available to learn more about the many different benefits and conveniences of
UI Online.