My Mother in Law had a financial assessment for carers with the LA and pays towards them -and in now on Direct Payment. She now has Alzheimers and is entitled to exemption from council tax. Does this reduction in expenditure get kept in full, or does this just increase her contribution by the same amount, or is there a taper?

I am not an expert on the way reliefs work but I think that you are correct in your suspicion that it does social services good rather than your mother in law: ie that the more remission or exemption anyone in receipt of social care gets, the more it means that they are able to pay under the means assessment. People all over the country are up in arms that as soon as their benefits get uprated, it just means that their charges go up, so that they never see the benefit of the increase. Social services gets more in.

And I found this in the Guidance –

The purpose of the minimum income guarantee (the sum you are left with) is to promote independence and social inclusion and ensure that they have sufficient funds to meet basic needs such as purchasing food, utility costs or insurance. This must be after any housing costs such as rent and council tax net of any benefits provided to support these costs….

So to my mind, that means that your housing costs are disregarded, and thus if you haven’t got any liability to council tax, because of an exemption, then you don’t get any disregard, because you actually HAVE not got to pay the council tax.