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Pensioners without Pension Credit are tested on household savings only for the council tax reduction capital limit #1936
council_tax_reduction_assessable_capital has three cases:
0 for guarantee credit recipients;
pension_credit_assessable_capital for savings-credit-only recipients, which is the Secretary of State's figure;
household savings only for everyone else.
The pensioner schemes' own capital rules count more than savings, including second homes, land and investments: SI 2012/2885 Sch 1 Part 6 Chapter 3 (paras 31-36), WSI 2013/3029 Sch 1 paras 25-30 and SSI 2012/319 regs 40-46. So a pensioner who does not claim Pension Credit is tested on less capital than a savings-credit-only claimant with the same assets. A YAML case in council_tax_reduction_pension_credit.yaml pins the gap: savings of £10,000 plus a £7,000 second property gives £0 when claiming savings credit and £1,999.60 when not.
Blocked on separating pension wealth from corporate_wealth. That bundle is about 85% imputed pension wealth, which the schemes disregard (#1837, PolicyEngine/policyengine-uk-data#452). Widening the test before the split would spread that over-count to every pensioner.
The non-Pension-Credit route also lacks pensioner tariff income (Sch 1 para 37). See the income issue.
Evidence from PolicyBench UK round 2 (policyengine-uk 2.126.7; unchanged on 2.126.8 and main c6d15c8). The savings-only proxy in council_tax_reduction_assessable_capital is not limited to pensioners: its default branch applies to working-age schemes too, as the four cells below show (two Scottish working-age, one Oxford working-age, one English pensioner).
Cell
Scheme
Household savings (the proxy)
Capital left out
Reference CTR
Law
scenario_022
Scotland, working age
£4,687
£36,324 corporate financial wealth
£1,153.00
£0 (capital over £16,000)
scenario_023
Scotland, working age
£234
£61,946 corporate financial wealth
£152.41
£0
scenario_118
Oxford, working age
£0 (none stated)
£329,807 corporate financial wealth
£2,008.50
£0
scenario_064
England pensioner (Bradford)
£14,061
£83,004 corporate financial wealth
£1,793.44
£0
All six models gave £0 in each case. The judge (GPT-6.1 Sol, blind to the engine) also derived £0, and I checked each against the engine's capital variable.
Activity
Address review: CTR capital, tax attribution, Scottish scheme, history
MaxGhenis commentedon Oct 11, 2026
Evidence from PolicyBench UK round 2 (policyengine-uk 2.126.7; unchanged on 2.126.8 and main c6d15c8). The savings-only proxy in
council_tax_reduction_assessable_capitalis not limited to pensioners: its default branch applies to working-age schemes too, as the four cells below show (two Scottish working-age, one Oxford working-age, one English pensioner).All six models gave £0 in each case. The judge (GPT-6.1 Sol, blind to the engine) also derived £0, and I checked each against the engine's capital variable.