Carer's Allowance and Carer Support Payment ignore the overlapping-benefit reduction by State Pension #1953

Found while fixing Pension Credit income for carers (#1952).

carers_allowance and carer_support_payment pay the full weekly rate whenever care hours or a reported award are present. They apply no overlapping-benefit reduction against State Pension or other personal benefits.

Law (fetched from legislation.gov.uk 2026-09-30; re-check before encoding):

• The Social Security (Overlapping Benefits) Regulations 1979 (SI 1979/597) reg 4(1)(a) make Part 1 Pensions Act 2014 State Pension a personal benefit that overlaps with Carer's Allowance.
• Reg 12 reduces Carer's Allowance itself by the other personal benefit, with a floor. Additional pension and graduated retirement benefit are not used (reg 4(2)(f), 4(6)). So payable CA = max(0, CA − overlapping State Pension).
• The Carer Support Payment Regs (SSI 2023/302) reg 16(2)-(3)(a) reduce CSP by "State Pension or Retirement Pension". Reg 14A pays the Scottish Carer Supplement only for weeks in which CSP "is payable".
• SPC Regs 2002 reg 15(3)-(4)(a),(g) and HB (SPC) Regs 2006 reg 29(3)-(4) count CA and CSP after these adjustments. SPC reg 18(1C)-(1CA) reduces notional State Pension by CA in payment.
• The Pension Credit carer addition and the HB carer premium keep underlying entitlement. is_carer_for_benefits already models this.

Effect. For pension-age carers whose State Pension is at least the CA rate, PolicyEngine pays CA that is not payable. Since #1952, Pension Credit and HB count that CA, so they understate the means-tested award by the same amount. Net income is still at least as close to the law as before #1952.

Data. The Enhanced FRS sets would_claim_carers_allowance from reported receipt: about 28k weighted State Pension age CA recipients in 2026, and no State Pension age CSP recipients. The calculator defaults would_claim_carers_allowance to true, so any 35-hour carer with a full State Pension gets CA in full.

Design notes. State Pension is split into basic_state_pension, additional_state_pension and new_state_pension, but it is often supplied directly as state_pension, and then the components are 0. Handle both. A Hypothesis property should check:

• payable CA + overlapping State Pension ≥ unadjusted CA;
• payable CA ≤ CA;
• CA non-increasing in State Pension.

Axiom: rulespec-uk#55 (Carer's Allowance, SSCBA 1992 s.70, unencoded).

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