to think the Carer's Allowance scandal shows the uncaringness of the DWP

[cakeorwine]

In a nutshell - if you get Carer's Allowance, you are supposed to only claim it if you earn below a certain amount. If you go over that amount, you can't claim it.

If you go over that amount and don't tell the DWP, you have to pay it back. But say you went over by 30 p. you would have to pay back not 30p but ALL of it.

The DWP know if you have earnt over the amount. But they don't tell you. They let it build up. And then prosecute you.

‘They’re heartless’: how one woman fell victim to the carer’s allowance trap | Carers | The Guardian

"On weekends when her daughter stays with her father, Moon worked part-time at Tesco earning £9.50 an hour. This would comfortably keep her under the earnings threshold of £127 a week at the time, especially when deducting allowances for fuel and pension payments – or so she thought.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) contacted Moon in 2019 to say she had breached the earnings limit and would need to pay back every penny – or she would be taken to court.
Moon, terrified, contacted Citizens Advice for help. It analysed her payslips going back to July 2016, when she started work at Tesco, and found that – even on the strictest understanding of the DWP’s rules – she had exceeded the earnings limit by about £3 most of those weeks. Some weeks it was as little as 50p over.
She appealed for clemency but the DWP refused to budge. It refused her offer to pay back the amount she was not entitled to – about £800 over the course of three and a half years.
Instead, she would have to pay back every penny of carer’s allowance over that period – known as the DWP’s “cliff edge”. It amounted to £11,292.75 – plus an additional £50 civil penalty."

And the DWP response:

“Claimants have a responsibility to inform DWP of any changes in their circumstances that could impact their award, and it is right that we recover taxpayers’ money when this has not occurred.”

Absolutely 💯

And the thing is, caring is often a 24 hour job, not just 35 hours. Doing any kind of work around that requires intense logistics and some kind of support network. Given that many conditions fluctuate and crises can happen requiring immediate attention carers trying to work as well are really between a rock and a hard place. And never mind the continuous admin.

Please don’t misunderstand me, caring can be difficult, time-consuming and exhausting but CA isn’t classed as earnings which is why it is treated differently to wages paid for carers receive.

I do understand but it still seems like madness.

It’s sickening reading through the struggles that so many people are having. I hope Labour put this in their manifesto as something they will change, as being a career for a loved one isn’t a bludy life choice so you don’t have to work!

It must be emotionally and physically tiring and to add the extra stress of being terrified you go over by 1p, it’s a scandal! I’m so sorry so many people are suffering.

It is so ridiculous.

You could have a million quid in savings or a few thousand coming in per month from an occupational pension and still get CA, but if you go 1p over the earnings limit you lose all the CA.

It is disgusting. Carers allowance is paid every 4 weeks, so 13 payments a year. The earning limit is weekly. Many people are paid calendar monthly - so 12 payments a year, so a weekly wage has to be calculated against a monthly salary re overpayments. Not easy when there are fluctuating earnings per month - and easy to see why mistakes were made by individuals.
The DWP computer could easily pick this up but it didnt for many years.
100% the additional earnings should be tapered like UC and not a cliff edge

Mine is paid weekly

It should be classed as earnings though. It's so very, very, very earned. Classing it as unearned income is insane, that should have been changed under the previous government.

As I posted, I was explaining why it is deducted £ for £ and why it is considered different to wages. It isn’t just a problem with CA. There are lots of types of income that are classed as unearned income, including some other benefits. My posts weren’t about the physical and psychological burden of caring. They were purely explains the why.

There isn't a "because" here.

I get DLA/PIP/(this year's acronym) which is also unearned income. If I were able to work it still wouldn't be counted as income. It has a special exception as far as tax is concerned, as far as income-related ESA was concerned, and I haven't kept up with UC but I suspect as far as that is concerned, too.

Similarly I get interest on savings, in the normal way. These too are unearned income and there are very generous thresholds before eg tax starts to apply.

These are all entirely human-made rules, and can be set as the government of the day chooses to set them.

The disastrous way Carers' Allowance is set up is entirely at the whim of whoever set it up.

Sorry, @Headfirstintothewild , I appreciate you're not justifying it, but just letting us know the words the DWP use to try to make this artificial set-up appear in some way inevitable.

@PerkingFaintly you may be unaware but unearned income has a specific meaning for UC. PIP and DLA are not classed as unearned income for UC. They are not classed as income at all. It isn’t as simple as saying interest is unearned income either. It is classed as income yielding from capital and treated as capital not unearned income or earnings.

And even if it is a man-made rule doesn’t mean it isn’t a ‘because’. There are other man-made rules that result in a because e.g. you can’t drive 100mph on a motorway because there is a man made speed limit.

"it is classed as" "it is classed as" "it is classed as"

By god? By the laws of the physics?

Someone classed it.

In fact, the DWP even classes monies differently from HMRC, from what you're saying.

Come on, stop trying to hide behind the passive tense, or using a two-stage process to conceal the first stage. I take back my earlier excuses for you. You ARE trying to justify this.

You ARE trying to justify this.

No I am not! Don’t try to tell me what I am doing. You haven’t got a clue about me. I am a carer to my DC myself and if you actually bothered to read the thread you would see I think the carer’s allowance scandal is dreadful. I also advise parents of DC with SEN on benefits day in, day out.

I am explaining. Many people don’t realise why CA is deducted £ for £ from UC. Many people don’t understand what unearned income in respect to UC is. You clearly didn’t understand what unearned income actually is and that it has a specific meaning that doesn’t involve PIP/DLA or interest hence me explaining it.

Lots of laws and legislation is people classing things as. That doesn’t change the fact that that is why something is like it is.

And now you are trying to tell me what I'm doing.

Of course I understand that the DWP have created a particular technical definition for the phrase "unearned income", for use by the DWP.
And that they have defined Carers' Allowance to be "unearned income".
And that they have defined DLA/PIP to be "not income at all".

That's... my point.

And now you are trying to tell me what I'm doing.

Only to tell you to stop telling me what I am trying to do when you couldn’t be further from the truth. If you don’t like me telling you to stop telling me what I am trying to do when you are wrong then don’t do it.

Of course I understand…

Your post stating “I get DLA/PIP/(this year's acronym) which is also unearned income” and ”Similarly I get interest on savings, in the normal way. These too are unearned income” says otherwise. If you understand DLA/PIP and interest aren’t unearned income you wouldn’t have posted they were.

How wrong you are.

And I note you've carefully omitted part of my post, in order to try to make your claim, viz: "If I were able to work it still wouldn't be counted as income."

You may be choosing to use the phrase "unearned income" only to refer to the DWP's definition.

But it has a common language meaning as well, ie money coming in that is not earned.

I am highlighting the fact that the definition created and used by the DWP is arbitrary. It doesn't match the definition created and used by HMRC (for whom interest very definitely is "unearned income")
https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/residence-domicile-and-remittance-basis/rdrm10415#:~:text=Unearned%20income%20is%20any%20income,dividends%20on%20shares

And it certainly isn't a common language description of the actual monies.

It's an arbitrary technical definition, for use by the DWP.

It was created by someone.

So it can be changed by someone.

[edited for SPAG]

I was replying to someone posting about CA and UC. Of course I am going to use the terms associated with UC and not something else. It would be fucking pointless and stupid to use terms associated with something else. If others want to discuss other meanings that’s fine, but is irrelevant to my post because I replying to someone posting about UC.

I didn’t ’careful omit’ anything. The part you have quoted is irrelevant to my point. The same definition is used whether people, not you specially, work or not. There was no need to include it. And why would I include whether you work or not when discussing UC when you said you are not even on UC and I was talking about UC? Utterly pointless.

It was created by someone. So it can be changed by someone.

Obviously. Just like the definitions of qualifying young person, severely disabled young person, drink driving, speeding, murder, theft, fraud… have all be created by someone. Exactly the same. The fact it was created by someone is totally irrelevant to me explaining why CA is deducted £ for £ and what unearned income is. Just like the fact the definition of murder has been created by someone is irrelevant to someone explaining what murder actually is.

Oh, and nothing in my post is wrong.

Honestly @Headfirstintothewild I've been getting DLA/PIP/(today's bolloxy name) since it was DLA.

So I know very well that HMRC classifies it as "not income" of any kind.

And that the DWP classes it as "not income" for the purposes of means-tested ESA.

As I said, I haven't kept up with UC. The fact that I have to check whether the DWP classes DLA/PIP as "not income" for the purposes of UC actually illustrates my point about how arbitrary the whole exercise is, and how subject to the whim of the DWP or other government body.

It's deducted because it's an overlapping benefit. When you receive Universal credit they will give you various elements including a standard single or couples element which is designed to be a basic amount to live off if you have no other income. Everyone one getting Uc will get a standard element, some people will get other elements. Carers allowance alone would only really be claimed by someone who has other means and didn't qualify for UC as well so people who have a partner whose income ruled them, as a couple out of claiming UC or they had savings which rules them out of claiming means tested benefits.
It is an overlapping benefit with UC because they are already giving that person the standard allowance to live off plus a carers element. Therefore they aren't going to pay twice ! Carers allowance exists really for people who are ruled out of claiming other means tested benefits alongside it or who need to claim it to get credited with NI contributions.
I'm aware it's a paltry amount for someone just claiming it alone but they are likely to have other income as well. Of course if viewed for hours of care given it is going to seem very low as many parents of disabled children will give many hours.

Again, my post was in response to someone posting about CA being deducted £ for £ from UC. Not tax, not ESA. Using other definitions when discussing CA being deducted £ for £ from UC would be idiotic since the tax definition has precisely nothing to do with UC therefore nothing to do with my post. I am sorry you didn’t understand the difference, but my post wasn’t meant for you. It was for someone who was discussing UC.

how arbitrary the whole exercise is, and how subject to the whim of the DWP or other government body.

Absolutely nowhere have I said otherwise. As I have posted many times now, I was explaining. This isn’t unique to CA and UC though.

If Carers' Allowance is only being deducted £1 for £1 from the UC of people who are receiving an equal carers' element of UC instead, then that is a reasonable.

(It's still a human-made structure, obvs, but a reasonable one.)

If it's being deducted from the UC of people who are not receiving an equal carers' element of UC, then that structure is unreasonable.

The carer’s element is never the equivalent amount to carer’s allowance.