Children with disabilities - can you get extra tax credits?

If your child has a disability, or if you're responsible for a child with a disability, you may qualify for extra tax credits, to help cover the cost of looking after them.

Who can get the extra money?

You can get extra tax credits if any one of the following applies:

you get Disability Living Allowance for your child
your child is registered blind
your child came off the blind register in the 28 weeks before you claimed tax credits

If your child is severely disabled and gets what's known as the Highest Rate Care Component of Disability Living Allowance you may get an additional payment.

You can still qualify for the extra money even if the Disability Living Allowance stops because your child goes into hospital.

Find out about Disability Living Allowance on the Directgov website

How much will you get?

The amount of extra tax credits you get depends on how much care your child needs. In this tax year - 6 April 2009 to 5 April 2010 - you could get approximately:

£2,670 a year, that is around £51 a week, if your child is disabled
£3,745 a year, that is around £72 a week, if your child is severely disabled

The amount you get also depends on other money you have coming in.

Disability Living Allowance doesn't count as income when your tax credits are worked out.
Other benefits like Carer's Allowance do count as income and can reduce your tax credit payments.

To find out more about how much you may get, call the Tax Credit Helpline on Tel 0845 300 3900, textphone 0845 300 3909 or use the online questionnaire.

Tax credits questionnaire - find out how much you can get

How to claim

If you're not currently getting tax credits

You need to fill in a claim form, which you can get by ringing the Tax Credit Helpline. You should send in your claim form as soon as you think you qualify for tax credits.

If you are already getting tax credits

If you now want to claim extra tax credits because your child has a disability, ring the Tax Credit Helpline as soon as you know you’re entitled to Disability Living Allowance (or the Highest Rate Care Component) for your child. You should do this within three months of finding out to make sure that you get your payments backdated to the earliest possible date.

When your tax credits claim can be backdated

Contact us

You can contact our Tax Credit Helpline on Tel 0845 300 3900 or textphone 0845 300 3909 (open from 8.00 am to 8.00 pm seven days a week except Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day).