The tax credits carer families miss

If you care for someone at home and your husband, wife or civil partner is working, there are two tax credits worth up to €5,750 a year between them — and most carer families have never heard of either. They are not welfare payments, so nobody at the Intreo office will mention them. They come off your household's income tax bill, they can be backdated four years, and Carer's Allowance does not count against them.

There is a deadline, and it is this year

Revenue's four-year rule means claims for 2022 must be made by 31 December 2026. After that the 2022 year is closed for good. If your family has been entitled to these credits for years without claiming, the oldest and often largest year is the one about to disappear.

As things stand in 2026, you can still claim for 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, as well as having the credit applied going forward.

1. Incapacitated Child Tax Credit — €3,800

There is no upper age limit on the child. This is the single most common reason families rule themselves out. A parent can claim this credit for a son or daughter in their twenties, thirties or older.

To qualify, the child must be permanently incapacitated, physically or mentally, from maintaining themselves. Where the child is over 18 at the start of the tax year, Revenue adds an age condition about when the incapacity arose. They must have become permanently incapacitated:

And the test is whether treatment would change it. Revenue's condition is that the incapacity must be such that the child is unlikely to be able to maintain themselves even with the benefit of treatment, a device, medication or therapy. So a condition that is well managed on medication is not automatically outside the credit — the question is whether, with that help, the child could support themselves.

• before turning 21 years of age, or
• after 21, but while in full-time education, or in training for a trade or profession — and where it is training, it must have lasted at least two years

So for an adult child who has been disabled since childhood or their teens, the age condition is met and the credit is claimable now — and for the four previous years.

How to claim: forms ICC1 (you fill it in) and ICC2 (your child's doctor certifies the incapacity), both on revenue.ie. You can also claim through myAccount.

2. Home Carer Tax Credit — €1,950 (€2,050 from January 2027)

This is the one where Carer's Allowance being ignored really matters. The credit goes to a married couple or civil partners who are jointly assessed for income tax, where one of them cares at home for a dependent person.

A dependent person is any of:

• a child for whom Child Benefit is payable
• a person aged 65 or over
• a person who is permanently incapacitated by mental or physical disability

That third category is what brings in an adult son or daughter with a disability — the same person who is too old to count for the Working Family Payment.

The income test, and why Carer's Allowance doesn't break it

The test applies to the carer's own income, not the working spouse's:

• income under €7,200 — the full €1,950 (€2,050 from January 2027)
• income above €7,200 — the excess is halved, and the credit is reduced by that amount
• income of €11,100 or more — no credit

Revenue does not count Carer's Allowance or Carer's Benefit as income for this test. A full-time carer on Carer's Allowance and nothing else therefore has nil income for this purpose and gets the credit in full. This is the detail that catches people out — they assume their Carer's Allowance disqualifies them, and it does the opposite of that.

How many hours can you actually work?

The test is a euro figure, but what it really controls is hours. At the 2026 minimum wage of €14.15 an hour, here is where the €7,200 and €11,100 land:

So on the minimum wage today you can work a little under ten hours a week before the credit starts shrinking, and a little over fifteen before it is gone altogether. The hours are ours — €7,200 divided by the hourly rate, divided by 52 — but the two euro figures are Revenue's.

The dependent doesn't have to live with you

If the dependent person is a relative, they can live next door, on the same property, within 2 kilometres, or anywhere with a direct communication link such as a telephone or an alarm system. (A non-relative must live in your home.)

What four years is actually worth

The rates have moved, so a backdated claim is not just the current figure multiplied out:

Across the four backdatable years that is €20,950 of credits on paper — but read the warning at the top again. Credits offset tax paid. For most single-earner carer households the refund will be a share of that, not the whole of it, because the tax paid is the ceiling. It is still very often the largest single sum these families are owed.

Two more worth checking

Dependent Relative Tax Credit — €305. Smaller, but it applies where you maintain a relative who is unable to look after themselves. It was €245 for 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Important: you cannot claim both the Incapacitated Child Tax Credit and the Dependent Relative Credit for the same child. Since the Incapacitated Child credit is €3,800 against €305, that is not a difficult choice — but it does mean the Dependent Relative credit is only worth claiming for a different dependent relative.

Relief for employing a carer — up to €75,000. If you pay for a carer for someone who is totally incapacitated, you can claim relief on the lower of the actual cost or €75,000 per incapacitated person.

Crucially this one is given at your marginal rate of tax, not the standard 20%, which makes it by far the biggest relief on this page for families paying for care. It covers carers hired through an agency or a commercial home-care provider as well as directly employed ones. Form HK1.

Why nobody tells carer families about this

Because the two systems do not talk to each other. Carer's Allowance, Disability Allowance and the Working Family Payment are administered by the Department of Social Protection. These credits are Revenue's. A carer dealing with the Department will be told, correctly, what they are entitled to from the Department — and nothing at all about the €5,750 sitting on the other side.

It is the same reason families ask us about the Working Family Payment when their children are grown. WFP needs at least one qualified child, meaning under 18, or 18 to 22 in full-time education, and there is no disability exception to that age rule. A 26-year-old on Disability Allowance does not count. The household is not, however, out of options — it is looking in the wrong place.

While you are checking, three things on the welfare side are worth a look in the same sitting: whether your Carer's Allowance is at the full rate (the income disregard for a couple is €2,000 (€2,300 from July 2027) gross a week), what happens to it if you take up work, and — if the person you care for is on Disability Allowance — how their means are actually worked out.

How to claim

1. Sign in to myAccount on revenue.ie (or register — you need your PPS number).
2. Go to Manage my tax for the current year to add the credits going forward.
3. For past years, request a Statement of Liability for each year and add the credits to it. Do 2022 first — it closes on 31 December 2026.
4. For the Incapacitated Child Tax Credit, submit ICC1 and get your doctor to complete ICC2.
5. Make sure you and your spouse or civil partner are jointly assessed — the Home Carer Tax Credit requires it.

Common questions

This guide is general information, not tax advice, and it cannot tell you your own refund — that depends on the income tax your household actually paid in each year. Rates and rules change, usually in the Budget. Confirm the current details on revenue.ie or with Revenue before you make a decision.

Keep going