Carer Payment

What is Carer Payment?

Carer payment provides financial support if you provide constant care to someone for at least 6 months. This payment is also available if you are caring for someone at the end of their life.

You can care for one or more people, in your house, their home or in a hospital.

To qualify for this payment, both you and the other individual must be Australian residents and satisfy an income and assets assessment.

Income and assets

The Carer Payment is means tested by an income and asset test. It is important to understand how your current assets impact the Age Pension you receive. Your adviser can help you navigate these. Some examples include:

• Your principal place of residence, including up to the first 2 hectares of land it is on, is exempt from the asset test.
• Superannuation investments are included as an asset if you are over the Age Pension age.
• Lifestyle assets are included at ‘fire sale’ value, not market value.
• Annuities are treated more favourably in means testing than account-based pensions due to the reduced access to capital.
• Most investment assets are ‘deemed’ to have earned a level of income to include in income testing. Centrelink sets the deeming rate to calculate this and reviews it regularly.
• For additional information on the assessment of income and assets, as well as current pension rates, please refer to www.servicesaustralia.gov.au .

What should I be thinking about?

• You need to advise Services Australia if your overall asset values increase by the following:
  • $2,000 or more for financial assets.
  • $1,000 or more for non-financial assets.
• You do not have to advise Services Australia about changes in value due to market fluctuations for any of the below, as they automatically revalue these investments twice a year:
  • listed shares and market-linked managed investments.
  • account balance changes for account-based or market-linked income stream products.
• The Carer payment is indexed twice a year (March and September) to help keep up with inflation.
• If you or the person you care for is Age Pension age, your Carer Payment will be taxable.

This information is of a general nature. It does not consider your personal objectives, needs or situation. It does not represent legal, tax or personal advice and should not be taken as such. If it has been provided to you with a Statement of Advice (SoA), you should rely on the personal advice in the SoA.

Care has been taken to provide up to date and accurate information relating to the subject area however BR Advice Pty Ltd (ABN 30 612 056 523, AFSL 488655), Blue Rock Private Wealth Pty Ltd (ABN 95 166 927 055, AFSL 452733), and their representatives make no representation as to its accuracy or completeness.

Published: January 2024.

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