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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Housing costs  →  Thread

Non dependent, calculation of income

MaggieB
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Dorchester CAB

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Total Posts: 271

Joined: 11 October 2010

Client in dispute with LA about calculation of nd income, his son periodically is reimbursed for travel expenses to training. LA have treated this as income pushing him into next band of ndd and have quoted regs (sorry don’t have them, at home now)
We looked at the Regs which do not seem to show any difference between calculation of income for claimants and non dependents (although letter from LA says they are different).
If they are the same we could argue expenses should not be treated as gross income as per CPAG p 272.  Any ideas?

HB Anorak
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Benefits consultant/trainer - hbanorak.co.uk, East London

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In the case of a non-dep it is the person’s “normal gross weekly income” that falls to be taken into account.  The Regs say nothing more about how that should be interpreted.

The old decision Chief Adjudication Officer v Hogg (so old that Mark Rowland represented the claimant ... wonder what became of him?) is often cited as authority for the proposition that a non-dependant’s in-work expenses should not be counted as part of his/her gross income.  One note of caution: Hogg wasn’t a non-dependant, he was claiming one of the predecessors of Tax Credits, I forget exactly which one, but the Regs referred to “gross income” as the starting point.  Hogg was a clergyman who received reimbursement of in-work expenses (it was common ground these did not form part of his gross income) and also had to pay out further in-work expenses from his stipend for which he was not reimbursed.  The appeal was about how those additional expenses were treated and the court concludes that his gross income was what he had left after meeting expenses: even those for which he received no reimbursement.

If that reasoning is applied to the concept of “gross income” in the HB context, it would support the view that the non-dep’s earnings should be net of in-work expenses but before tax and NI.