Council Tax Benefit Abolished

From 1st April 2013 Council Tax Benefit will no longer exist. It will be replaced by Council Tax Support (CTS). Anyone in receipt of Council Tax Benefit on 1st April 2013 will automatically have their Council Tax Benefit changed over to CTS. You will not have to re-apply if you currently receive Council Tax Benefit but you may be affected by the changes.

Council Tax Support is a replacement for Council Tax Benefit and while the scheme is still regulated by central government and must comply with legislation, the kind of support that the scheme offers is decided and funded by the Council. This means that you might find there are slight differences between the Royal Borough's CTS scheme and that offered by neighbouring authorities, and you may find that if you move from one authority's area to another the CTS offered is different.

Council Tax Benefit is currently calculated by deducting 20% of the excess income (between a family's Net Income and Applicable Amount). This 20% deduction is known as the taper. Currently, the benefit is calculated by applying this taper to the full Council Tax charge for your property (100%).

From April 2013

For Working Age people, the new Council Tax Support will be calculated by deducting 25% of the excess income (between a family's Applicable Amount and Net Income) - a taper of 25% rather than the previous 20%. There will also be a cap applied to the maximum Council Tax Support of 8.5%. Therefore the maximum Council Tax Support that anyone could receive will be 91.5% instead of 100%. This means that under the new scheme all working age people will have to pay at least 8.5% of their total Council Tax charge.

These changes will not affect people of pensionable age.

If you are a Council Tax Benefit recipient, we will write to you in March to advise you of how your Council Tax Support will be calculated from 1st April 2013. You will also receive a new Council Tax bill which will show what support has been awarded for the year. New applications for Council Tax Support can be made online in exactly the same way as they are currently for Council Tax Benefit.

You must make sure that you check to see if you are affected by the changes to Council Tax Support as it could be that where you previously did not have any Council Tax to pay, the changes to the scheme mean that you now do. Similarly, the changes could mean that you will have more to pay than you did before. In February we will be writing to everyone who is expected to be affected to provide them with more information, including advice on how to pay, when to pay and what to do if you are having problems meeting the cost.

No Discretionary Housing Payment can be considered to assist with the shortfall between the Council Tax Support and the Council Tax charge.

More information can be found on the following pages:

• Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support
• Advice and Benefit

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