Council Tax Discounts
DISCOUNTS
The Council Tax charge is partly based on the value of a property and partly on the number of adult residents. The property element and the person element each amount to 50% of the charge.
The basic bill assumes that there are two adults resident in the property. If there are more than two, the charge is not increased, but if there are fewer than two, a discount can be granted.
This discount amounts to 25% of the total charge, in other words, half of the personal element of the charge.
Disregarded Persons
When counting the number of adult residents in a property, certain categories of people are not included. For this reason they are known as "disregarded persons". A brief description of these categories is shown below:
- Students, student nurses and apprentices and Youth Training Scheme Trainees
- Persons over 18 in respect of whom Child Benefit is still payable
- Persons who are resident in a nursing home and receiving care
- School and further education college leavers under 20, from the date they leave school to 1 November that year.
- Persons in detention
- Severely mentally impaired persons who are in receipt of certain qualifying state benefits.
- Persons living in the property in order to provide care for another person (unless they are paid more than £36 a week for this)
- Members of international headquarters and their dependants
- Members of religious communities with no income or capital of their own.
In order to assess whether you qualify for discount, count up the number of adults in your household and then exclude anyone in the disregarded categories above.
- If the total is two or more, no discount is applicable.
- If the total is one, you will qualify for a 25% discount.
- If the total is zero, a discount of 50% of the charge will apply.
(A property may have a resident count of zero either because it is empty, or because all the inhabitants are disregarded, for example, a family consisting of a student and a person still on Child Benefit.)