Disability Allowance question?

[Dude240502]

I'm on Disability Allowance, it says that you earn E480 a month without your allowance being deducted, does this mean that I would be allowed to rent out a room in my house if the rent was less than E480 or would my allowance be reduced?

 

[noproblem]

Under the Irish government's Rent A Room scheme you can rent out a spare room in your house, Tax Free, if the income does not exceed €14,000 per annum. This amounts to €1,166 per month.

 

[Dude240502]

Under the Irish government's Rent A Room scheme you can rent out a spare room in your house, Tax Free, if the income does not exceed €14,000 per annum. This amounts to €1,166 per month.

How much are you allowed to earn from rent without your allowance being deducted?

 

[fairy1]

Rental income is treated different than working. As far as I know it is euro for euro you will lose. There is no disregard for this type of income.

 

[Hooverfish]

I think the best way to figure this out would be to get referred to your local branch of Employability, who have good expertise with the Disability Allowance income rules and good contacts within social welfare. They should be able to find out the answer for you. Have you tried using this calculator? It does not tell you the answer to your question, but by running it both with and without the rental income included, you would find out what the effect might be:

How to Use the Benefit of Work Estimator

www.welfare.ie

 

[gipimann]

Rental income of the type that you describe (where you are also living in the property) will be assessed in full as income - as fairy1 said, there is no disregard.
Here's the relevant paragraph from the Means Assessment guidelines on www.welfare.ie

"Any cash income from letting out a portion of a house that is not personally used or enjoyed is assessable against the claimant as income. For example, a room might be rented on a seasonal basis to students, ‘Air B n B’ customers, or for use as a business office."

The disregard of €120 pw applies to earnings from work, generally work of a rehabilitative nature.

Means assessment guidelines can be found here -

Means Assessment

www.welfare.ie

 

[Dude240502]

Is it euro for euro, it says that you can deduct 5% for wear and tear on the room, does anyone know exactly how it works?

 

[gipimann]

Dude - sorry, I missed that part in the guidelines. It sounds like you can deduct 5% (and possibly 15%) as mentioned, so once that's done the assessment is then euro for euro.

 

[Dude240502]

Someone explained it to me like this, if the rent was E350, E350 X 12/52 =81, 5% of 81 is 4.05
81-4.05 is about 77 so
203-77 = 126

so I would be allowed to keep E126 a week, does this sound like it could be right?