Looking after grandchild

moonpenny

Sorry if this is the wrong place!

Can someone shed some light on someone (about to claim State pension) who has been looking after granchild roughly 1 day per week for the past year.

She has either been paid a small amount or, groceries paid for etc. She has not worked for a couple of years but not recieving any benefits whatsoever - living on savings.

We thought that you could do that if it was family but someone has told her this is not the case and she should be declaring it to the taxman.
She intended carrying on doing 1 day per week after she gets her pension.

Can someone tell me the rules regarding this and how it will effect her before and after retirement?

jem16

It would be regarded as income if she is paid, family or not. Having groceries bought for her is entirely different.

Up to age 65 she has £7475 personal allowance pa. If she earns less than this (including interest from savings) then no tax is due.

Once she starts to receive her pension she may go over this allowance and should declare any income.

After age 65 she will receive a higher personal allowance.

McKneff

Tell her not to worry about it,
and she should not be living on her savings, she is entitled to help,

Just an opinion but she's probably worked all her life and some scaremongerer comes along and worries her about a few groceries and the tax man.

When she gets her pension tell her she should look into pension credit also.

If this is the only income (state pension) she received she'll be nowhere near the tax allowance limit.

moonpenny

Thank You! all for answering.

Yes! she has worked all her life (made redundant a couple of years ago) but lowly paid jobs I'm afraid and I think she hasn't got a lot of savings left.

I don't think she wanted to be paid but as I understand it, her daughter didn't want her doing it for nothing so it was helping each other out.

I know they took her to the supermarket most weeks (paid for her groceries) but the times they couldn't, they gave her a few pounds.

jem16, as you said, buying groceries is a different matter, maybe she should keep to just doing that if it's not going to get her into trouble.

I will have a word about looking into claiming Pension Credit as the State Pension will be her only income

Thank You all again for your help.

tyllwyd

If you think of it that she is looking after her grandchild for free, but her daughter is helping her out with gifts of groceries and a few pounds now and again just because they are family, then it isn't income. It is such a small amount, I really don't think the tax man would even want to know about it, it would cost more in admin to deal with the paperwork than they would ever get back in tax.