12K a year with rent a room, but what happens "living alone" benefit?

NeptunesMoon

Posting on behalf of an individual who is living alone and was suggested as somebody who may have a room to rent for a friend. The individual declined to take in the tenant as they were afraid they would lose their social benefit. I forget exactly what benefit they said it was, but I think it was to do with living alone. I think they also get a fuel benefit too, even though they don't drive, I'm not sure is it fuel for heating (coal, wood etc?).

Anyway, I'm not sure how much they would even be entitled to, but they said they were afraid of the tenant giving the address for tax reasons and then it showing up on the system as somebody living with them and their benefit would be cancelled.

I'm guessing it's probably nowhere near the €12K a year they could get tax free if they took say 2 tenants in permanently, but then having two tenants would bring its own problems and maybe they prefer to live alone and get the extra benefit rather than dealing with tenants for a bit of extra income.

They own the house fully from what I know.

Just looking for any advice or feedback on this. Could they by any chance still get benefit while having tenants and being all above board?

cheers

loyatemu

http://www.welfare.ie/en/Pages/Living-Alone-Increase.aspx

from reading that, they would lose it if they rented out a room but it's only €9 per week.

edanto

Possibly....it depends on which social welfare payments they are availing of. This page might help.

*Effect of rental income on social welfare payments*

If you are getting a means-tested social assistance payment from the Department of Social Protection, any rental income you get will be assessed as means and may affect your payment.

However, rental income will not be assessed as means if:

- You are getting a State Pension (Non-Contributory) or a Widow's/Widower's or Surviving Civil Partner’s (Non-Contributory) Pension

and

- You would be living alone unless you rented out a room in your home.

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/owning_a_home/home_owners/rent_a_room_scheme.html

Gatling

Sounds like Disability allowance or pension with secondary benefits of living alone allowance which is only something like 9-12 euro pw .
As posted above if they are on a means tested payment it will have to be assessed

Penn

Could it simply be that they're using that as an excuse because they don't want to rent out a room but are trying to say so politely? I mean you say they were suggested as someone who might have a room to rent to a friend, but maybe they don't want to?

Gatling

They could lose some benefit but they would probably earn a lot more renting depending on the circumstances

NeptunesMoon

cheers again for all the replies.

found out some more info..

they get the living alone allowance, but they also get disability allowance and then for I think 6 months, fuel allowance. The living alone allowance is about 470 a year, and all they are entitled to on disability is about 4,170 a year but then the fuel allowance brings it up to about 4,500.

So altogether, between living alone, disability & fuel allowance, they are getting welfare of roughly 5K a year.

From what I understood, they aren't getting the full disability allowance as they are in receipt of maintenance from separated husband and I think because of this, their disability allowance has been reduced.

So I think they said that if they earned any more money (say through rent) then they would risk losing their disability (or having it reduced by whatever money they make via rent).

So if they charged €80 per week in rent, which is 4,160 a year, they might lose pretty much all their disability so it wouldn't make any sense to rent at all.

Unless they are missing something and their disability WOULDN'T be affected and they could still earn 12K a year tax free? But probably not...

The_Conductor

Its actually gone up to 14k a year- however, most of the benefits you've listed are means based- i.e. social welfare entitlements would be reduced in some manner in cognisance of the income from the rent-a-room scheme. If she could access a reasonable portion of the 14k- she might be considerably better off?

athtrasna

NeptunesMoon wrote: »

cheers again for all the replies.

found out some more info..

they get the living alone allowance, but they also get disability allowance and then for I think 6 months, fuel allowance. The living alone allowance is about 470 a year, and all they are entitled to on disability is about 4,170 a year but then the fuel allowance brings it up to about 4,500.

So altogether, between living alone, disability & fuel allowance, they are getting welfare of roughly 5K a year.

From what I understood, they aren't getting the full disability allowance as they are in receipt of maintenance from separated husband and I think because of this, their disability allowance has been reduced.

So I think they said that if they earned any more money (say through rent) then they would risk losing their disability (or having it reduced by whatever money they make via rent).

So if they charged €80 per week in rent, which is 4,160 a year, they might lose pretty much all their disability so it wouldn't make any sense to rent at all.

Unless they are missing something and their disability WOULDN'T be affected and they could still earn 12K a year tax free? But probably not...

That's a question for the State Benefits forum.