What is the Blind Person's Allowance for 2026/27 and how does it work?

Full answer

Blind Person's Allowance (BPA) is an additional personal allowance that increases the amount of income you can earn before Income Tax is due. It is added on top of the standard Personal Allowance of GBP 12,570 for 2026/27. You qualify if you are registered as blind or severely sight impaired with your local authority in England and Wales, or if in Scotland or Northern Ireland you cannot do work for which eyesight is essential and your sight loss is at the equivalent level. The exact BPA amount is set by the government each year and is not included in this rate card, so confirm the current figure on gov.uk before relying on it. The mechanism is straightforward: the allowance simply raises your tax-free threshold, so for a basic-rate (20%) taxpayer the cash saving is 20% of the allowance, and for a higher-rate (40%) taxpayer it is 40% of the allowance. Unlike the Personal Allowance, BPA is not reduced if your income is high, so it remains available even where the Personal Allowance is tapered away above GBP 100,000. A valuable feature is transferability: if your income is too low to use all of your Blind Person's Allowance, you can transfer the unused part to your spouse or civil partner, which is helpful for couples where one partner has little or no taxable income. This transfer is separate from the Marriage Allowance and the two can interact, so check both. You claim BPA by contacting HMRC; it is not given automatically. To see how the higher tax-free threshold changes your deductions, use the income tax and take-home pay calculators.

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