Income of dependent child?

Child is disabled mum has Carers for them.

They are 17 and have now left school, started a skill seekers course at £55 weekly.

Mum still has Income Support additions (And child benefit) for them as skill seekers allows this to continue.

Income Support are taking the full £55 in as mums income and reducing her on-going Income Support by the full amount, this does not seem right has anyone come across this before.

Should this child have a £20 earnings disregard?

Would the same income rules apply to mum if we changed her to Child Tax Credits?

Client needs to claim CTC immediately. All the child's income is then disregarded - Reg.23(2), IS (Gen)Regs.

Until then child's income counts unless disregarded under the old form Reg.23(2). Most earnings were so disregarded but I don't think this can be earnings or else the child would be an employed trainee and parents not entitled to CHB. I suspect it's a training allowance with no disregard. Most unwaged trainees in England and Wales now recieve EMA, which is disregarded (para.11, Sch.9) but I think Scotland is different. Worth checking whether this payment can be classed as an EMA, or the Scottish equivalent, though.

Problem is that the IS treatment of children's income predates the April 2006 extension of Child Benefit to trainees. Solution is CTC.

In E+W I would suggest investigating whether the family will be better off if the young person claimed IS and IBY in their own right - although maximum CTC with disability element is usually higher. Not sure that will work here though as, again, the training allowance
would probably be taken into account.

Richard Atkinson

bill, assuming that skillseekers allowance is paid to the children not the mother, they can't aggregate the chldren's income any more - have a look at reg 23 (2).

This is the new form Reg.23(2). The old form (pre-April 2004) still applies for cases where a child personal allowance is included in the applicable amount, as here.

The provision for this is tortuous in the extreme. It is to be found in the The Social Security (Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2003 SI 2003 No.455, pp.667 et seq. in Sweet + Maxwell Vol II. Unfortunately Sweet and Maxwell omit large parts of these regulations although the notes to Reg.17 (pp.274-7)explain the effects.

The complete CTC etc Consequential Regs are here:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2003/20030455.htm

In them Schedule 1 introduces the new form Reg.23(2). Reg.1(3) disapplies Schedule 1 where there has been no award of CTC.

So my advice still applies - they do still aggregate children's income in a case where there has been no CTC claim and the solution is to claim CTC at which point the new form Reg.23(2) will indeed apply.

Richard Atkinson

As I suspected CTC it is then, thanks for all the help.