Council tax exemption

pee14

Hi does anyone know about council tax exemption,  how long in takes ? Do they back date payments ect , if any replies would be appreciated.

Ross_Alumni

Hi @pee14

How are you? 

Council Tax Reduction can be back dated yes, you need to ensure you tell your local authority what date you want it back dating to when you apply. Find more information here about backdating CTR.

When you ask how long it takes, do you mean how long it will be before you're paid? This will vary, and won't be helped by the current lockdown situation, everything has slowed.

poppy123456

HI,

Council tax reduction and council tax exemption are 2 completely different things. Council tax exemption can be backdated to when you qualified but council tax reduction has backdating limits but what those limits are will depend on your local councils rules. All local councils have their own criteria so i'd advise you to have a look at their website.

It can take 2-8 weeks but sometimes longer for a decision to be made for this.

Ross_Alumni

I hope the advice above from @poppy123456 has been helpful for you @pee14

Thanks Poppy, I need to get better at learning to remember what a screen reader says, for some reason I had 'reduction' in my mind rather than 'exemption' Sorry about that @pee14  

poppy123456

@Ross_Scope you're welcome. No worries, we all get confused by the different terms.  Benefits are a complete nightmare to understand and it took me a very long time to learn what i know.

Ross_Alumni

poppy123456 said:

@Ross_Scope you're welcome. No worries, we all get confused by the different terms.  Benefits are a complete nightmare to understand and it took me a very long time to learn what i know.

@poppy123456, even having had experience of the system it baffles me fairly often If I can have half as much knowledge one day as you do, I'll consider myself very wise on the topic.

Cheers

pee14

@Ross_Scope
@poppy123456
Thankyou both of you for your replies, yes I meant exemption, they have proof of high care sent in from 2014 and my mums doctor has emailed their form of severe impairment doctors certificate this morning . So hopefully won't take long then . Thankyou.

pee14

@poppy123456
@Ross_Scope
Thanks to Martin lewis we wouldn't have known about this .

Lisatho11987777

It gets confusing becsuse if you live in Wales its different to get exemption here you have to be on full universal credit or another qualifying benefit even when I only worked 16 hours and had universal credit I still had to pay council tax 

pee14

@lisathomas50
Yes my mum had to be on dla or pip highest care and live alone.

poppy123456

I think you're trying to claim for the severe mental imapirment disregard here, which is available nationally but i do know it's not an easy disregard to have backdated.

pee14

@poppy123456
Yes thats the one , they have now said it could be backdated 6 years @nd thats why she had to prove her dla back then, to 6 years.im not sure what you mean by its not an easy disregard to have backdated , will she need to prove anything else? 

poppy123456

It can sometimes be difficult with this disregard and some local councils really dig their heals in.  Hopefully this won't be the case for her especially if she was claiming a qualifying benefit all that time.

pee14

Oh I see, Thankyou @poppy123456