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Six months into her job at an NYC law firm, a woman who would only identify herself as "Karin" was terminated. She relocated to St. Louis, Mo., and began studying for the bar exam while staying busy with a food blog, STL Meal Deals. Money was tight; she was living on $405 a week from unemployment benefits from New York, so she thought she'd try generating a little side money by signing up for Google AdSense, which pays bloggers to host ads on their sites and sends checks when their earnings hit $100. It was a pittance that would cost her dearly.
After three months, Karin finally got enough clicks on the ads to get a fat $100 check from Google. And for some reason, she felt an ethical responsibility to report her AdSense income to the Man. And so her Kafkaesque nightmare began, with the Department of Labor cutting her weekly benefits to $300 and sending her a form to fill out and send to her employer. As she soon learned, the unemployment bureaucracy has not yet figured out how to classify such income derived from "teh internets."
Her endless back-and-forth with the DOL yielded a laughable number of conflicting instructions; at one point a state official told her she needed to declare that she was working every time she updated her blog. Finally, the state finally decided to investigate her, and she's been declared ineligible for unemployment benefits while the investigation is ongoing! Karin tells Forbes, "It's frustrating that nobody seems to have a straightforward answer. It's even more frustrating that trying to work and generate additional income, while being straightforward and honest about that income, is treated with suspicion and punished."
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How dare she studies for the bar exam on MY dime! She should like, go out and do real work.
She needs to get in contact with Charles Rangel who can guide her though the process of properly reporting her income
You leave NYC and you all of a sudden become more honest and less a hustler. Lesson learned, yo.
It's truly awful if you actually try to do right by them. When my fiance was on Disability for a few months and that ended he had to switch to regular unemployment, it was delayed for another 3months, simply because he put the lapse in time between when he was last employed to when he actually filed for unemployment was because he was receiving disability, they just didn't understand or didn't wanna deal, need more info, need more info, that's all they could say. Needless to say he sent that thing 3 more times and made countless calls, etc, before he got anything, true nightmare.
ain't government great kids?
stupidity, for actually stating that you received any income and informing a clueless bureaucrat.
coming soon, more internet stings about
any action that contradicts
"where you ready willing able able to work this week?"
tweeting from the beach,
updating your facebook status about your hiking trip
uploading pictures to flickr
writing restaurant reviews on Yelp!
commenting on gothamist.
In all fairness, as bad as state and local government is in New York, they've never done the kind of damage that the Wall Street geniuses have.
On that note, maybe our state needs to shell out more cash so as to improve the quality of its employees? More govt spending at first, but greater efficiency in the long run.
"On that note, maybe our state needs to shell out more cash so as to improve the quality of its employees? More govt spending at first, but greater efficiency in the long run."
WHERE DO YOU THINK THE MONEY FOR "GOVT SPENDING" COMES FROM?
Damn! I find it hard to believe that we're paying those bureaucrats in Albany a salary to be so stupid.
never make a civil servant do more work than they need to.
I've had a license that misspelled manhattan as "manhatten". never went to get it corrected because It's more trouble than it's worth.
Until the federal government hacks that work for TSA detain you at the airport for "lying" about where you live
i thought you needed to remain in NY, looking for a new job in order to collect unemployment. is that true?
My thoughts exactly. When my mother was collecting from NJ and moved to NC, she could no longer collect. Same deal when my friend moved from MA to NY last year. Maybe things have changed, but they needed to have a valid in-state address to collect the benefits.
You don't need a state address because the benefits come from the state you work in regardless of where you live, it's just much easier to collect if you have a NY address.
A friend of mine moved from NYC to San Francisco and lost his job in San Fran, when he filed for unemployment it went through NYC because that's where he worked the most in the time prior to his unemployment.
Why or why would you tell uncle sam about that income????
Karin.....you.are.an.idiot.
Lesson learned for next time though, right?
If you take the watered-down thin government gruel, don't start showing up with fresh meat. It upsets the old people.
I don't care about her being truthful about her income. It was idiotic for the government to consider a lucky-if-you-get-it payment from ad clicks "income".
Google collects all your tax information upfront when you sign up for Adsense so Uncle Sam was going to find out eventually - though possibly not til she reached $600 in earnings.
I think you're right. If she was really generating some money the she would have had to declare it. If she does her own taxes, at the end of the year, she might have had a problem. If she went to a knowledgeable tax preparer she may or may not have to declare it. In either case she wouldn't have wound up in such a box. Remember the old Army maxim "Never Volunteer".
I'm guessing that the photo is because the character's name is Karen Hill?
I've collected unemployment twice in my life and both times it was pretty easy and efficient. Go down once at the beginning, call weekly and press a few buttons on your phone, and bingo the check is in your mailbox every Tuesday like clockwork. Just don't burden them with too much extraneous information.
KARIN! WHY DID YOU DO THAT, KARIN?!
The rules for Unemployment benefits are royally F'ed up. If you do ANY work you must report it and you lose 1/3 of your benefits that week, regardless of whether you get paid for it or not.
For a lot of people it makes more sense to not work and stay on employment than deal with the penalties for reporting or not reporting work.
If I report self-employment income, it takes WEEKS for them to send me the paperwork that I have to fill it out, for me to fill it out and for it to go through the system.
That means 3-4 weeks that my benefits are on hold. THEN they send me the paperwork that they send to employers (because I'm self-employed) asking me if I am still being employed by myself and if I'm giving myself vacation pay and if I have more work for myself. It's a huge clusterf*ck.
Honesty=Punishment
I am starting to wonder if this could be a bigger trend in America these days. People collecting unemployment insurance from states like New York and California, but moving to way cheaper places to live. Nowadays, it's doled out using direct deposit, and they even set up the bank account for you and issue you an ATM card. Without worrying about a live check in the mailbox, you could move anywhere. In a down and out city like St Louis, she could actually be banking substantial amounts of her unemployment insurance. A person could completely ride out this recession with almost zero pressure to go out and get a good job. I do think it's wrong. Because money doled out in NY is being spent in Missouri. It's really not fair. This woman was studying for the Bar exam on he taxpayer's dime, she wasn't studying to become a nurse or go to med school.
Who can live in New York City on unemployment???? Maybe moving upstate is the answer.
It may not be fair but NY legally allows you to move, probably because so many people move to NYC specifically for a job and then can no longer afford to continue living there when their job runs out.
Even in a city like St. Louis, "Karin" (if self-supporting) is probably not "banking substantial amounts" of her unemployment checks. What about locals from nyc who lose their jobs and can't afford their apartments? What if they then decide to save money by moving back to their parent's homes within the 5 boroughs? There are plenty of people who fall in the latter category and their expenses are frequently less than the money they receive from their unemployment benefit.
Do you think people should receive less unemployment if their expenses are less?
writing a blog with ZERO ad revenue is still considered a business, your self employed. techinically their rules say its a business venture, profitability or losses do not affect the fact that its work.
just wait until some midwestern fool tells UE that they sold some comic books on ebay, thats self employment.
BTW, i checked that blog, i cant help thinking that she must be one seriously nasty FAT chick!
I've said it once and will say it again, CASH!
An honest lawyer??? No wonder she got fired.
But really. Collecting unemployment and not trying to seek work, are grounds for denial of funds anywhere. You can't study or go to school while getting unemployment. You certainly can't collect other incomes while getting the benefits either....
I'm shocked she didn't know this...
You can work part time/temp and still get unemployment. If you work for 1 day and it's under $405, your weekly payment gets reduced by 25%. Work 2 - it's reduced by 50%. Work 4 - and you don't qualify for benefits.
So if you work 23 hours on Monday but make less than $405, you'll receive $305. Work one hour Monday - Thursday and you'll receive no benefits.
Who says you can't study while getting unemployment? She could still be looking for a job in St. Louis while studying for the bar exam. There is nothing about studying for the bar that would interfere with someone's efforts to find a job. In fact, plenty of people work at fulltime jobs while preparing for the bar exam. Of course, attending school fulltime would be a different matter.
10 years ago a judge sided with the labor department when they stopped unemployment checks because I was making an income from Forgotten NY -- about $10-$25 a month at the time. They don't f!@# around.
www.forgotten-ny.com
Yeah, I don't think you can mess around with unemployment benefits. If taxes are taken out of your earnings while collecting for part-time work, they can easily seek out your employment history and verify dates worked, if they wanted to. They have your SSN.
It is free money, so who can really complain all that much? (under the assumption you're looking for a job)
"mom! pancakes!"
bottom line you're better off not reporting anything short of a new job to UE, i once was on unemployment after a corporate position went south and had to prove that I will never ever, ever, think about creating art (which I do) and making money at the same time, for as long as I am unemployed. unless i was willing to labeled a self-employed no income having no unemployment getting (and thus starving) artist.
You Lie!
Get a job!
These are the people you want to run your healthcare?
Dipshit. Everyone around her is stealing & defrauding and getting away with embezzling TRILLIONS of taxpayer money and SHE decides to be Miss GoodyTwoShoes and report her measly 'income'.
'uncharted territory' is correct.
taking pictures loading them into the Gothamist Flickr pool and getting .23 payment for someone ordering a coffee mug with your ironic pictue will be considered self employment and business income. Ebay sales will count. Blogging with Ad sense pennies will count, all these things will count once the state starts looking for reasons to cut down on all those payments.
UE rules say you cannot 'volunteer' even at an animal shelter for no pay (you should be looking for work)
you cannot help out at a family business (thats work)
if you take a commision only job but make no sales you get no UE check (thats work)
you cannot start your own business (thats work)
you cannot enroll in school, (thats not work, but your not looking for work by being in class) unless its
--->approved
and you receive one of those welfare trade school vouchers or take one of those remedial typing classes they offer which for manhattan takes place in harlem at a foodstamp crackhouse methadone clinic on 125th st.