Carer Support Payment earnings

Carer Support Payment (CSP) has an earnings limit. Regulation 14 of the Carer’s Assistance Regulations 2023 excludes a carer when the earnings counted for the relevant award week exceed the limit. A reported Carer’s Allowance award does not exempt them.

Limits and penny fractions¶

CSP has its own Sunday effective dates, separate from Carer’s Allowance:

The limit is inclusive. Schedule 2 paragraph 4 handles a fractional penny in the individual’s favour. At the final earnings test, £204.005 a week counts as £204.00 and passes; £204.01 exceeds the £204 limit. The model compares annual earnings with the first excluded weekly penny amount multiplied by 52, in the earnings array’s numeric precision. This applies the penny rule without an extra tolerance or rounding annual earnings before converting them to a weekly amount.

Annual earnings approximation¶

The model reuses carers_allowance_earnings, a Person-level annual amount in pounds. It deducts modelled employment tax and primary Class 1 contributions, notional tax and contributions on self-employment profits, and half the individual’s pension contributions. Partner and cared-for-person earnings do not enter the carer’s test. Employer pension contributions are not deducted.

Annual net earnings are spread evenly over 52 weeks. Constant-through-year inputs match the weekly comparison; varying earnings may not. Originally, regulation 14 assessed that award week’s earnings. From 16 November 2025 it assesses the immediately preceding award week. Annual inputs cannot distinguish those weeks or reproduce all pay-period and averaging cases in schedule 2.

The shared reader approximates employment tax using PAYE on pay alone with a standard code, rather than actual withholding. It does not represent all statutory care-charge deductions and disregards. Reusing it does not certify that every schedule 2 calculation is implemented.

Coverage and other conditions¶

Raw parameter dates retain the statutory dates above. The existing annual parameter conversion samples 30 April for a named fiscal year; the model’s 2026 value therefore represents the £204 limit, rather than a claim that it legally began on 1 January. CSP remains modelled from 2025, with the previous Carer’s Allowance route retained for Scotland in earlier model years. This change does not extend coverage back to the 2023 pilot.

The existing caring-hours, reported-receipt and take-up conditions remain. Age, education, the cared-for person’s qualifying-benefit conditions and the full claim-status rules are separate gaps. Earnings above the limit remove underlying CSP entitlement before the overlapping-benefit calculation. This differs from an overlapping benefit reducing an otherwise entitled person’s payment to zero. The Scottish Carer Supplement is paid only when CSP is payable. Caring hours and reported caring can still qualify a person for the Universal Credit carer element, which does not apply this earnings limit.

Integration dependencies¶

The shared Carer’s Allowance earnings reader retains the age-conditioned Class 2 and Class 4 deductions from merged PR #2444. Natural trading-income cases cover exemption after State Pension age and Class 4 liability in the tax year that pensionable age is reached. The existing annual approximation remains. PR #2474 is the separate minimum-age change and must retain this earnings condition when stacked or integrated.

The open PR #2518 changes a shared Carer’s Allowance earnings parameter. Once this reader is shared with CSP, that parameter’s effects on CSP require coordination and validation; this page does not assume the two benefits remain independent of that parameter.

Couples caring for the same person¶

SSCBA 1992 section 70(7ZA), the Northern Ireland counterpart, section 70(7ZA), and CSP regulation 5(3) restrict multiple relevant entitlements for the same cared-for person. The model applies the allowance restriction to the claimant and partner when partners_care_for_same_severely_disabled_person is true. It removes the second candidate entitlement before reducing either payment for overlapping benefits. A selected carer whose overlapping benefit removes the payment still retains the underlying entitlement.

The couple jointly elect which of them has the entitlement; the Secretary of State decides only where they don’t. The data don’t record the election, so the model takes the one that gives the larger award: of the otherwise eligible partners, the one whose candidate award is larger has the entitlement. The model’s own awards differ only under the Budget 2026 Carer’s Allowance earnings taper; everywhere else each eligible partner has the same rate. An award that an input supplies can differ in any year, and the election then follows it. Where the awards are equal, the model prefers a reported recipient, then an eligible benefit-unit head, then the eldest eligible partner, and member order breaks an age tie. That order is a modelling convention, not statutory priority. An ineligible reported recipient or head cannot displace an eligible partner. The caring-hours, earnings, age and take-up conditions stay as they are.

In 2030-31, the year the taper starts, the model applies the election separately to the weeks before the taper and the weeks under it, since the law restricts entitlement day by day. Where the two partners have the same award for those weeks, the couple elect the one with the larger award over the year, and then the order above applies. A partner below the earnings limit has the full rate in both parts and the larger award over the year, so the couple elect them for the whole year, even where the other partner’s award under the taper equals the full rate, as it does at a taper rate of zero. Where both partners earn over the limit, neither has an award before the taper, and the couple elect the one with the larger award under it. Either way one partner has the award for the year, at any taper rate of zero or more. A carers_allowance_pre_couple_limit that an input supplies carries no dates, so the restriction keeps one partner’s award for the whole year. The parts of the year reach the payment as shares of the year: carers_allowance_pre_overlap is the amount from carers_allowance_pre_couple_limit that the restriction keeps, and overlapping benefits come off for the share of the year in which the restriction keeps it.

The shares describe an amount only where the model’s own formulas calculate it from the parts of the year and, for every member of the benefit unit, it is the amount the parts give: within half a penny, and an award, however small, exactly where the parts give one, since the couple restriction chooses only among partners with an award. An amount that an input supplies, or that a reform neutralizes or calculates with a formula of its own, carries no dates, even where it equals the model’s: a value cannot show where it came from. So does an amount that a reform changes while keeping the formula, for example by adding defined_for. A carers_allowance_pre_couple_limit of that kind gets the couple restriction for the whole year, and the whole year’s overlapping benefits come off what the restriction keeps. A carers_allowance_pre_overlap of that kind comes after the couple restriction, so only the whole year’s overlapping benefits come off it. Either way, the payment starts from that value, and where the carers_allowance_pre_overlap is of that kind, the payment doesn’t read the stage before it. A reform that changes only a variable’s label, say, keeps the parts of the year. The test of the formula covers the whole variable, so a reform that wraps the formula to change one person’s amount moves every amount to the whole-year treatment. The model treats less than half a penny for the year, which in practice is floating-point residue where an overlapping benefit equals the award, as nil, and pays a penny.

The election compares awards before overlapping benefits, so it doesn’t always maximise what the couple receive: it can choose a partner whose overlapping benefits reduce CA or CSP to zero, where choosing the other partner would pay something.

The existing same-person default remains: two qualifying reported awards, or awards that caring hours and take-up cannot explain, indicate different care targets. Directly supplied payment, pre-overlap or entitlement inputs remain authoritative. The default reads candidate amounts and supplied inputs before the couple restriction, so it does not depend on the final awards it limits. A cached calculation is not treated as a supplied award. Where relationships are known, supply the same-person flag and claimant/partner flags explicitly.

This restriction covers units with exactly two claimant/partner flags. It does not identify care targets across benefit units, allocate awards to other members, or settle malformed units with more than two partners. The model still uses caring hours or reported receipt as a proxy for the cared-for person’s qualifying conditions. The statutory coordination with another person’s UC carer element is a separate limitation: the existing UC allocation can choose a different person from the allowance convention. The couple fix does not certify that cross-programme allocation. Scottish Carer Supplement remains separate from the CSP component and follows CSP actually payable.