ESA and income

Hi,

I have a client who is on Income based ESA WRAG. Her son (who lives in the abroad) has started to give her between £700 and £900 per month to help her out financially.  I can’t work out if this will be taking into consideration as income for ESA purposes. (I believe it is ignored for HB under Schedule 5 (14) (1) (b).) any help in confirming this would be greatly appreaciated.

Voluntary payments, I’d say. If made regularly, they’re disregarded. If made irregularly, they’re non-disregarded capital.

p.283/284 of the new Welfare Benefits and Tax Credits Handbook 2015/16 (woohoo!!! new book) points you in the direction of para.16, Sch.8 of the ESA regs which holds that voluntary payments made at regular intervals are to be disregarded in calculations of income other than earnings. It’s essentially the equivalent position to the regulations you note for HB.

For a discussion of the meaning of a voluntary payment, you should look at the commentary in Sweet and Maxwell Volume 2014/15, page 727 et seq. Basically, case law has established that if the person making the payments neither receives nor expects anything in return for making those payments, then they’re classed as voluntary, following R(H) 5/05.

Eta: or of course you can look in Findlay 2014/14 at p.616-617 where there’s similar commentary.

hi,

thanks for that very quick response