Nursing home without Fair Deal

I did this with my Dad. His nursing home fees were paid from his savings/pension (not using Fair Deal). I applied for tax relief on his fees for last year. Even though he paid the high rate of income tax on his pension, tax relief was only given at the low rate because the home he was in didn’t provide 24 hour nursing care. If it had, he could have got the credit at the high rate. I just applied for the credit online via his Revenue myAccount. I did it in a January this year for last year’s fees. I think the cheque arrived after about a month.


Here’s the details from Revenue
https://www.revenue.ie/en/personal-tax-credits-reliefs-and-exemptions/health-and-age/health-expenses/nursing-home-and-additional-nursing-care-expenses.aspx

(Interestingly, the Citizens Information pages about nursing home tax relief fails to mention that you only get the higher rate if the home has the 24 hour nurse care. This is what I had relied on for information, so we got a bit of a shock when the tax relief was less than we expected)

Gael23 wrote: »

I would hw e thought a nursing home would have a nurse on duty at all times

I don’t know if they do, and I’m not sure if merely having a nurse on duty is enough. Revenue says “provides 24-hour on-site nursing care“, which to me implies more than a nurse on call.

All I can say is that my direct personal experience is that my dad did not get the relief at the high rate because Revenue determined that the home did not provide the 24 hour nursing care required.

All the tax relief application asks for is the total fees paid and the address of the nursing home. We were going to query it with Revenue, but then Covid 19 happened and he ended up passing away in May. I’ve other things to take care of first, but I may still inquire to confirm that he got the correct rebate.

In any case, it’s something worth checking with the home your relative is in.