Carers Allowance: Holiday let rents classed as income?

cognis0

My wife receives Carers Allowance for our disabled teenage son (she has no other income). 

We recently bought a house with an annex building in the garden as we thought this might be suitable to give our son some independence in due course. In the meantime (which will probably be several years) she has decided to do holiday lets/Airbnb in the annex.

My understanding is that rental of this nature is not counted as income for my wife for Carers Allowance purposes ~ but I should be grateful if someone could clarify ~ we don't want to be in the situation of potentially going over the carers allowance limit.

Thank you.

Yamor

It depends on whether Carer's Allowance will treat it as 'business' income (i.e., from a rental business) or merely passive income.

Unfortunately, in my experience, they are very quick to argue it is 'business' income. If they were to do that, you could always appeal it, and take your chances before a Tribunal.

See the following document, at paras. 15743-15746.

If it is a 'business', then when calculating the amount of income, you may need to look at paras. 15762-15773, depending on the exact setup of the accommodation.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6260053c8fa8f54a95dfda5a/dmgch15.pdf

cognis0

Yamor said:

It depends on whether Carer's Allowance will treat it as 'business' income (i.e., from a rental business) or merely passive income.

Unfortunately, in my experience, they are very quick to argue it is 'business' income. If they were to do that, you could always appeal it, and take your chances before a Tribunal.

See the following document, at paras. 15743-15746.

If it is a 'business', then when calculating the amount of income, you may need to look at paras. 15762-15773, depending on the exact setup of the accommodation.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6260053c8fa8f54a95dfda5a/dmgch15.pdf

That is very helpful, many thanks and I will read that carefully 🙂 

cognis0

Yamor said:

It depends on whether Carer's Allowance will treat it as 'business' income (i.e., from a rental business) or merely passive income.

Unfortunately, in my experience, they are very quick to argue it is 'business' income. If they were to do that, you could always appeal it, and take your chances before a Tribunal.

See the following document, at paras. 15743-15746.

If it is a 'business', then when calculating the amount of income, you may need to look at paras. 15762-15773, depending on the exact setup of the accommodation.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6260053c8fa8f54a95dfda5a/dmgch15.pdf

Hi @yamor I've now looked at this carefully and I'm satisfied that the rental will not be classed as income in respect of Carers Allowance. It's all completely bonkers of course; from these regulations, someone could have a property portfolio earning £millions in profit, but this would not affect their Carers Allowance (and other allowances?). But someone who has no income and is forced to let out rooms in their own house would lose all their Carers Allowance if the income exceeded £151 per week . Madness and yet another example of how the system is rigged in favour of the better off....

Bigwheels1111

I owned my house, I moved in with my friend to care full time for them.
I then rented out my house.
As I had purchased the house to live in and only rented it out as a necessity, the rent was disregarded.
So I could get 6k rent, carers allowance and work 16 hours if I wanted to.
I called to declare it as did not need problems arising in the future.

So your son moved in for around a month but could not cope on his own so moved back in with you. Cough cough.
So to help pay the mortgage you rent it out now and then, Is that right. 😜