Thousands of households across Ireland are eligible for a whopping €1,900 tax credit as part of new social welfare measures, and many may not even realise.
If you care for a child on your own, you may be able to claim a tax credit called the Single Person Child Carer Credit (SPCCC). Tax credits reduce the amount of tax that you have to pay.
The SPCCC was increased from €1,750 as part of Budget 2025 and is given to the person who lives with the child for the whole or greater part of the year (more than 6 months) – called the primary claimant.
If you are a primary claimant, you can give up your entitlement to the credit to another person, called a secondary claimant, if the child lives with them for more than 100 days in a year and they meet all the other qualifying conditions.
If you are cohabiting, you cannot claim the SPCCC for the year in which you stop living together. You cannot claim the SPCCC for the year in which you become widowed or a surviving civil partner (the year of bereavement).
You can claim the SPCCC in subsequent years if you qualify. The primary claimant is the person with whom a qualifying child (see below) lives for more than 6 months of the year.
If both parents have equal custody (by court order), entitlement to the credit is decided by which parent gets Child Benefit from the Department of Social Protection. A child who is living away from home while attending college is considered a qualifying child if they are still maintained by the claimant and return home outside of term-time.
A qualifying child is a child who is either:
- Born in the tax year
- Aged under 18 at the start of the tax year
- Aged over 18 at the start of the tax year but in full-time education or
- Eligible for the Incapacitated Child Tax Credit
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The child may be:
- Your own child.
- An adopted child.
- Any child you support and maintain at your own expense. This means having day-to-day responsibility for the upbringing of the child and responsibility for their charge and care. However, foster children do not qualify for SPCCC.
Secondary claimant
A primary claimant can give up the SPCCC to a secondary claimant. A secondary claimant must meet exactly the same conditions except for the condition that the child lives with him or her for the greater part of the year.
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The secondary claimant does not need to have legal custody of the qualifying child but must prove that the child lives with them for at least 100 days in the year. A day can be counted if the child stays with them for most of that day. So, for example, if a child stays with them from Saturday morning until Sunday evening, this can be counted as 2 days.
You cannot claim the SPCCC if you are:
- Jointly assessed for tax as a married person or civil partner or
- Married or in a civil partnership (unless separated) or
- Cohabiting
The primary claimant can claim the SPCCC by using the Revenue myAccount service.
This can also be done by completing the Form SPCC1 provided on the Revenue website and posting it to the Revenue office.
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