Carers Allowance earnings limit

Does anyone know if the earnings threshold for people claiming Carer’s Allowance is being increased in line with CA and other benefit increases?

It’s in the benefit rates pages although helpfully not in the index.

Earnings rules
Earnings rules       Rates 2022/23 (£) Rates 2023/24 (£)
Carer’s Allowance 132.00                 139.00

Similar question - has the UC MIF increased ?

F Forsyth - 20 March 2023 03:04 PM

Similar question - has the UC MIF increased ?

Mif is linked to NLW so will increase automatically.

I thought I would use this thread to tackle one of the challenging questions of the Carer’s Allowance net earnings threshold: Backdated earnings and the net earnings threshold.

The challenge is how backdated pay for a period of months will be taken into account when it is paid.

Clearly at the time when pay is backdated, e.g. this month (this is someone paid calendar monthly) it will include backdated net earnings to April 2023.

I have looked at the guidance - Earnings for non-income related benefits (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6260053c8fa8f54a95dfda5a/dmgch15.pdf)
and sections for “Periods over which earnings are taken into account 15400-15469” but I am still scratching my head.

But there is also the fact related to how earnings are taken into consideration, i.e. “when they are legally due to be paid”...  and this gets complicated effectively (e.g. look at 15757 !)

How these different parts of the guidance actually add up in concluding ‘over what period’ this backdated payment of earnings should be taken into consideration is still mind-boggling.

One of my solutions would be to take a Caring Break to preserve Carer’s Allowance over that time, under Reg 4 (2) of the Social Security (Invalid Care Allowance) Regulations 1976. However, this may not actually be the “correct advice” here depending on how these net earnings should be considered to be “legally due”.

I have to say I would welcome some thoughts on the matter. In the particular case I am looking at, these backdated earnings if they were taken (now) over the period starting in April 2023, would land this carer with an overpayment of Carer’s Allowance (!) .

Going forward, the impact of this pay increase could be mitigated by increased contributions into a work / private pension (half of which would be deductible); so this in combination with taking a ‘caring break’ to preserve Carer’s Allowance for that specific pay period, would be one solution.

Please your thoughts are welcome!!