[anth-volk]

Summary

Adds a UK blog post that explains the Budget 2026 Carer's Allowance earnings taper step by step at household level, with PolicyEngine's population estimate of the cost.

The PR is based on main. #1457 has merged, so the line chart type the post uses is already on main, and this PR is no longer stacked on another branch.

Post

• The rules. The post explains the rules today, then what the taper changes. Sources are the Budget 2026 document, the policy costings (page 16), the Budget 2026 data sources (page 30), the Explanatory Memorandum to SI 2025/352, GOV.UK and legislation.gov.uk.
  • A 100% taper applies above the Weekly Earnings Limit, which is 16 × the National Living Wage rounded up to the next pound: £234 a week in 2031-32 on the OBR's October 2026 forecast.
  • Nothing changes at or below the limit.
  • It applies in England and Wales only, from some point in 2030-31.
  • Around 48,000 people benefit, about 3,000 of them in Wales.
• Household examples, 2031-32.
  • Two carers: one not on Universal Credit, one on it.
  • Step-by-step tables in whole pounds: Part A (the earnings test), Part B (net income, or for carer 2, Universal Credit) and Part C (carer 2's net income).
  • The current-law limit is set to the government's rule (£234) in both runs.
  • The examples include the Universal Credit PAYE adjustment, so a carer on Universal Credit who pays tax on the allowance loses about £8 a week at £240.
• Charts.
  • Carer's Allowance by gross weekly pay.
  • Change in net income, with and without Universal Credit.
  • Effective marginal tax rate, from PolicyEngine UK's marginal_tax_rate with the pay rise set to £1 a week, plus a table of rates by pay band.
• Population figures.
  • The dashboard's run gives a net cost of £24 million in 2030-31 and £48 million in 2031-32. The estimate is static: no change in hours worked, and take-up of newly eligible carers at the data's 60%.
  • The government's costing, certified by the OBR, is £38 million and £79 million after behavioural responses, of which £5 million and £10 million is extra block grant for Scotland (OBR, Economic and fiscal outlook, October 2026, detailed forecast tables: policy, Table 1.1, measure 7). The Treasury's Table 6.1 (row 7) rounds it to £40 million and £80 million. The post's costing table shows the OBR's split.
  • The rest of the official figure, £33 million and £69 million, is the extra Carer's Allowance less the Universal Credit saving, with no income tax. Before income tax, our figure is £39 million and £79 million, about a sixth more.
  • A table splits the cost into its parts.
  • With the Universal Credit PAYE adjustment, which PolicyEngine UK 2.151.0 and the dashboard don't yet make, the net cost is about £28 million and £55 million.
  • About 82,000 people have a higher allowance in 2030-31 and 83,000 in 2031-32, all in England; about half are in families on Universal Credit, and almost all of them lose a little.
• The person cared for. A paragraph and a limitation explain that a tapered award can end Pension Credit's extra amount for severe disability (or the severe disability premium) for the person cared for, unless the carer already has Universal Credit with the carer element. PolicyEngine UK can't link a carer to someone in another household, so neither the examples nor the population figures include it.
• Cover. An original vector illustration in the PTA post's style, drawn as SVG and rendered to WebP.
• Rounding. Whole pounds throughout, including the household tables, following the rule for the Budget posts.

Method

• policyengine 6.11.1 with PolicyEngine UK 2.151.0, on the OBR's October 2026 forecast on both sides, as the dashboard does.
• The taper is the carers_allowance_earnings_taper modifier from Budget day: announced measures uk-autumn-budget-dashboard-2026#290. The examples use its code at 004c5281, which Create Donate page #290 now carries apart from documentation and formatting. The population figures are the dashboard's run.
• In the examples, both runs set the current-law earnings limit to the government's rule (£228 in 2030-31, £234 in 2031-32); PolicyEngine UK holds it at £204 after 2026-27.
• In the examples, both runs also use the Universal Credit PAYE adjustment: for a person with employment income, the income tax that Universal Credit deducts from earnings includes the tax on Carer's Allowance (UC Regulations 2013, regulation 55(5)(b)). Self-employed carers are out of scope.
• The adjustment is planned for policyengine-uk after Budget day, combined with the Pension Tax Allowance's replacement of uc_income_tax_on_earnings.
• Households are calculated for gross pay from £0 (marginal rates) or £150 (other charts and tables) to £400 a week.
• The marginal tax rate chart uses marginal_tax_rate with gov.simulation.marginal_tax_rate_delta set to £52 a year. It plots a point every £100 of annual pay and the points where the rates change.

Checks

• Website tests for components, content and lib pass locally at the branch head (35 files, 351 tests), including the chart-block parsing and posts.json content tests. Prettier is clean on the post and posts.json.
• The marginal tax rates were checked against direct differences of household net income between simulations £52 a year apart: 16 cases, both carers, with and without the taper, all within 0.001 percentage points. They also match the £1-step figures behind the band table.
• The household figures match the modifier's own test cases:
  • £1 over the limit gives the weekly rate less £1;
  • at or below the limit nothing changes;
  • Scotland and Northern Ireland are unaffected.
• Vercel preview deployments for the branch build successfully.

To review

• The cover image. The author, the tags (uk, policy, autumn-budget) and the publication time (2026-10-28 20:39) are confirmed.

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[MaxGhenis]

Carer's Allowance taper post, reviewed at 3abf33c

The rule, the Treasury figures, the reach source and the household arithmetic all check out. Three things need changing before 18:30, and the first is the rounding rule.

What I checked

• Rule. I checked it against Budget 6.13, the costings (p. 16), the Explanatory Memorandum to SI 2025/352 (5.6) and the data sources (p. 30: 48,000 in 2030-31, newly entitled included, about 3,000 in Wales).
• Limits. I checked them against OBR Table 1.13: 16 × £14.23 rounds up to £228, and 16 × £14.62 to £234. dashboard Create Donate page #290 at 7f343f8e now has the same rule (efcda9c5).
• Forecast. The households are on the October forecast. Carer's Allowance is £98.37, which matches with_forecast; on the March forecast it's £96.95. So the fuel seat's calculate_household problem doesn't arise here.
• Arithmetic. I redid the £240 column for both carers (£92.37 of allowance, £17.13 of tax, Universal Credit £114.71, −£7.71) and the £366 run-out. I also checked the 14.4p, 36p, 45p and 85.6% marginal rates and the population table's sums.
• Earlier Create Donate page #290 points. All are handled:
  • the 2030-31 half year matches Create Donate page #290's code and its corrected description (96adfb2a);
  • the limit is rounded up to the pound;
  • setting the current-law limit to £228 and £234 in both runs removes the dashboard's gap from £204, and the post explains the difference correctly.
• Disclosure. Only totals and counts are published, there are no deciles, and the post states that fewer than 50 households sit behind the estimate. Fine.

Changes

1. Whole pounds in the household tables (check 7, revised by Max at 15:55Z). The rule is now whole pounds everywhere, worked household tables included. Pence stay only where the post spells out a formula, such as 16 × £14.62 = £233.87, rounded up to £234, or the 72p and 14.4p per £1.
   • The Part A, B and C tables keep pence, and the post says "The tables keep pence".
   • Please round those tables and the row labels such as "(£98.37 at or below the limit…)" to pounds.
   • The 1p note becomes: a total can differ by £1 from the sum of its rounded rows.
   • The £m figures (£27.5 million, £55.0 million) are fine.
2. Two PolicyEngine costs for one measure. The post's £27.5 million and £55.0 million include the Universal Credit PAYE adjustment. The dashboard doesn't make that adjustment, so it publishes a different PolicyEngine cost for the same measure today.
   • The post says the dashboard lacks the adjustment, but it doesn't give the dashboard's figure.
   • Please add the net cost without the adjustment from the same run, which should match the dashboard's figure, and point to the dashboard. Then a reader who sees both can reconcile them.
   • Carer 2's example already shows both effects (−£8 with the adjustment, −£17 without). The population figures need the same treatment.
3. One sign convention. The Table 6.1 table shows costs as negatives (−40, −80). The population table shows the net cost as positive (27.5, 55.0) and the offsets as negatives. Please use the Treasury's sign in both, or label the second table as costs to the Exchequer.

Smaller

• Methodology. It cites the carers-taper-limit-rule branch at 004c5281 and says Create Donate page #290 differs in the limit. Create Donate page #290 now has both commits (efcda9c5, 407196c1), so please cite Create Donate page #290 and drop the sentence about the difference.
• Reach. DWP's 48,000 compares Carer's Allowance awards with and without the taper (data sources, p. 30). So it is the like-for-like figure for the 82,500 "with a higher Carer's Allowance". One clause saying so would help, since the post then says half of those gain nothing.
• Projected thresholds. The £12,830 Personal Allowance and the £247 a week are PolicyEngine UK's 2031-32 projections. Please say so where they first appear.
• Voice. The parenthetical about what a "dynamic" costing usually means is commentary; I'd cut it. The policyengine-writing skill isn't installed in my session, so I went through the brief's checklist by hand. Active voice, a number behind each claim, sentence case, no prescriptions and the model version all pass.

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[DTrim99]

Approving at 1147fc44. Nothing critical.

• My second-pass points are all in (ca3f5d11):
  • the carer-element exception at lines 457 and 774;
  • the £0 and £150 pay ranges at line 787;
  • the autumn-budget tag.
• Max's 20:34 and 20:36 text is applied word for word (1147fc44):
  • the OBR's certified £38 million and £79 million lead at lines 10 and 44, with Table 6.1's £40 million and £80 million as context;
  • the cost table shows the OBR's lines, which sum: −33 − 5 = −38 and −69 − 10 = −79;
  • line 763 compares like with like.
• Arithmetic. Before income tax, ours is 78.5 − 39.2 = £39 million in 2030-31, and £79 million in 2031-32 (79.42). Against the OBR's welfare lines of £33.17 million and £68.73 million, that's 18% and 16% more, so "about a sixth" holds.
• No leftovers. No "about 60%" or "Treasury estimates £40/£80" phrasing remains. Line 765's "submitted to the OBR for certification" stays, as Max asked.
• posts.json. It's valid, with one entry for the post, dated 20:39 and tagged autumn-budget.
• Main and CI. The branch merges cleanly with main. CI was still running when I checked.

Not checked: the OBR's Table 1.1 itself, because obr.uk sits behind a browser challenge. The figures rest on Max's independent check.

[MaxGhenis]

@anth-volk one last wording change: drop "(51%)". It repeats "About half", and the share rests on records from fewer than 50 survey households, so a precise percentage suggests more precision than the data has.

Suggested change

	About 82,000 people have a higher Carer's Allowance in 2030-31, and about 83,000 in 2031-32, all in England. About half (51%) are in families on Universal Credit, and almost all of them lose a little, because Universal Credit falls by the whole of the extra allowance and income tax is due on it.
	About 82,000 people have a higher Carer's Allowance in 2030-31, and about 83,000 in 2031-32, all in England. About half are in families on Universal Credit, and almost all of them lose a little, because Universal Credit falls by the whole of the extra allowance and income tax is due on it.

[MaxGhenis]

@anth-volk I pushed one more commit, de1fa06, as a fast-forward on your 275ce1d. It applies a style rule I want everywhere: "exceeds" instead of "is above". Nothing else changes, and no figure moves.

• Line 7: "whose net earnings exceed the limit by any amount, even 1p"
• Line 18: "if the carer's income exceeds the Personal Allowance"
• Line 21: "whose net earnings in the week before exceed the Weekly Earnings Limit"
• Line 22: "whose net earnings exceed the limit by even 1p"
• Line 28: "whose net earnings exceed the limit by more than the weekly rate"
• Lines 100 and 449: "pay plus allowance, about £332, exceeds the Personal Allowance"
• Line 775: "can exceed the limit in some weeks and not in others"
• The card description in posts.json: "whose net earnings exceed the Weekly Earnings Limit"

Uses where "above" is a preposition stay as they are, such as "£1 for each £1 above the limit" and "a carer above the limit". I'll merge at de1fa06 once CI passes.

[MaxGhenis]

@anth-volk one more commit, 30ed1c3, a fast-forward on de1fa06. It's an active-voice pass under the same style rule ("all written stuff … the rule is to use active voice"). No figure changes, and quotes from official documents stay word for word. An independent reviewer checked every rewrite for meaning and for new claims, and its fixes are in. The main changes:

• Line 19: "Universal Credit is reduced by" → "Universal Credit falls by"; "The carer element … is paid for the caring itself" → "Universal Credit pays the carer element for the caring itself".
• Line 20: "a person entitled to both is paid only after the rules … are applied" → "the rules on overlapping benefits apply before payment and stop the two benefits both meeting the same need".
• Line 21: "is treated as gainfully employed and gets no allowance" → "The rules treat a carer … as gainfully employed, so the carer gets no allowance".
• Line 31: "Northern Ireland, where social security is devolved, is not included" → "the taper does not cover Northern Ireland, which runs its own social security system".
• Lines 32 and 35: "the taper will be implemented" → "the government will implement the taper"; "how … earnings will be measured" → "how … the government will measure earnings"; "the way net earnings are worked out" → "how the test works out net earnings".
• Lines 10, 44 and 765: "certified by the OBR" / "which was submitted to the OBR for certification" → "which the OBR certified". The OBR certified every costing except fuel duty (EFO, chapter 3, footnote 1).
• Lines 59, 78, 449, 453, 457 and 740: "before income is taken into account" → "before Universal Credit takes income into account"; "nothing is taken off" → "no income tax or National Insurance comes off the pay"; "all of the allowance is taxed" → "income tax applies to all of the allowance"; "Pension Credit's extra amount … is not paid while" → "Pension Credit does not pay its extra amount … while"; "pay above about £148 is taxed at 20%" → "income tax takes 20% of pay above about £148".
• Line 763: "where Carer's Allowance is devolved" → "which gained powers over Carer's Allowance in 2018" (the OBR's devolved forecasts, Table 2.6 note).
• Smaller spines: "is just under £228" → "comes to just under £228"; "are below £234" → "do not exceed the £234 limit"; "About half are in families" → "About half live in families"; "is before any offset" → "comes before any offset"; "The comparison is between" → "The comparison sets … against"; "The rows are rounded" → "We round the rows"; "Scotland's Carer Support Payment is not affected" → "The taper does not change Scotland's Carer Support Payment"; "Self-employed carers are outside the scope…" → "This adjustment and this post do not cover self-employed carers"; "is worked out with Carer's Allowance counted" → "we work out … by treating Carer's Allowance as part of the earnings".

I'll merge at 30ed1c3 once CI passes.

[MaxGhenis]

Approving at 30ed1c3 on Max's go ("Yes, merge after fix").

• Figures: every microsimulation figure matches the released dashboard artifact for this measure (−£23.79m / −£47.58m; components CA +78.45/+160.06, UC −39.21/−80.64, income tax +15.45/+31.84). The sensitivity (£27.6m / £55.3m) was re-run on the dashboard's build.
• Official costing: the OBR's certified figures lead (Table 1.1, measure 7: −33.17/−68.73 welfare, −4.92/−10.16 Scottish block grant, −38.09/−78.90 total), with Table 6.1's −40/−80 as context. An independent check confirmed them.
• Wording since David's approval at 1147fc4: the "(51%)" removal (Anthony), "exceeds" for "is/are above" (de1fa06) and the active-voice pass (30ed1c3). An independent reviewer checked every rewrite for meaning and new claims.
• Tables: whole pounds. CI exit 0 at 30ed1c3, MERGEABLE, no changes requested.

[MaxGhenis]

Merged origin/main (018ea75, the property post #1460) into the branch at 249dd61 to clear the posts.json conflict. I kept both entries, with this post first by date. No other file changed: against main the branch still adds only the post, its cover and the posts.json entry, and the post text is byte-identical to 30ed1c3. I'll squash-merge once CI is green on 249dd61.

[MaxGhenis]

#1463 (trading allowance) landed while CI ran, so I merged origin/main (9446f05) in again at 6d8a988 and kept both posts.json entries. Against main the branch still adds only this post, its cover and its posts.json entry, and the post text is byte-identical to 30ed1c3. I'll squash-merge at 6d8a988 once CI is green.