Anxiety over collecting PUA?

Asked by ANef_is_Enuf (26839

) June 26th, 2020

I have been slowly filing for my PUA from when I was out of work the past few months, but due to anxiety over collecting it because I keep hearing stories of people having to pay it back out of the blue, I’ve only been doing it 2 weeks at a time. I am a self employed, cash gig worker and the taxes that I turned in from last year had nearly no income on them (I had a different job than I do this year.) So, I was approved for a fairly low unemployment benefit. Cool, that’s fine, it is pretty close to what I make in a week and that was great.

Except now I’m suddenly getting the additional $600 a week and it’s causing me a lot of anxiety. Is this really my money? Does everyone qualify for this? I don’t make anywhere near this in a week, it feels like it will bite me in the butt if I accept it.

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4 Answers

If you qualify for the basic PUA benefits, then you also qualify for the extra $600. Most of the overpayments happened early on in the program. I was overpaid the first two weeks, and my state made up for it by deducting the amount I was overpaid each week from the next two checks.

The people who have found themselves having to pay money back are those who either received some ludicrous overpayment (like the guy in Oregon who received 37 checks) or who received more than their benefit determination letter said they were supposed to get and didn’t contact anyone.

So if you’re getting no more than your base PUA benefit plus the extra $600, then you should be fine. Just keep an eye on it to make sure that’s what you’re getting every week, and contact someone if you get more than that.

SavoirFaire (28945

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