If you are registered blind or severely sight-impaired, you can earn more before paying tax — and unused allowance can pass to your spouse.
Blind Person's Allowance is one of the more generous and least claimed reliefs in the UK tax system. It is not means-tested, it does not taper away with income, and any part you cannot use can be handed to a spouse, yet many eligible people never claim it.
The allowance increases the amount of income you can receive before Income Tax applies. For 2025/26 it is £3,130, added directly to the £12,570 Personal Allowance. That means a registered blind person can earn up to £15,700 tax-free.
Unlike the Personal Allowance, Blind Person's Allowance:
To claim, you contact HMRC directly, by phone or through your Personal Tax Account, and provide the reference from your local council registration or your Certificate of Vision Impairment. HMRC then adjusts your tax code so the extra allowance is applied through PAYE, or factors it into your Self Assessment calculation. There is no annual reapplication: once HMRC knows you qualify, the allowance continues each year unless your circumstances change.
The allowance is per person, not per household, so a couple who are both registered blind can each claim the full £3,130. Because it is set against your taxable income in the same way as the Personal Allowance, the cash value depends on your tax rate: it is worth £626 a year to a basic-rate taxpayer, £1,252 to a higher-rate taxpayer, and £1,408.50 to an additional-rate taxpayer.
Suppose Ruth is registered severely sight-impaired and earns £20,000 a year from employment in 2025/26.
Her tax-free allowances combine:
| Allowance | Amount |
|---|---|
| Personal Allowance | £12,570 |
| Blind Person's Allowance | £3,130 |
| Total tax-free income | £15,700 |
Her taxable income is £20,000 − £15,700 = £4,300, taxed at 20% = £860.
Without Blind Person's Allowance her taxable income would have been £7,430, giving £1,486 of tax. The allowance therefore saves her £3,130 × 20% = £626 for the year. You can see the effect on any income with the salary calculator.
Because the allowance is fixed regardless of earnings, a registered person on a low income may not have enough taxable income to use it all. In that case the unused portion, or the whole allowance, can be transferred to a spouse or civil partner, even if that partner is not visually impaired. You simply tell HMRC you want to transfer it, and your partner's tax code is adjusted to give them the benefit.
This transfer is separate from, and can be claimed alongside, the Marriage Allowance, which moves part of the ordinary Personal Allowance between spouses. The two reliefs can stack, so a household where one partner is a non-earning registered blind person and the other is a basic-rate taxpayer can move both the Blind Person's Allowance and a slice of the Personal Allowance across, ensuring no relief is wasted and the family's overall tax bill is as low as the rules allow.
Blind Person's Allowance is rare among UK reliefs: it does not taper, it can be backdated, and any unused part can be saved by passing it to a partner.
A registered blind sole trader claims the allowance in exactly the same way, but it is applied to their self-employed profit rather than through a payroll code. When the annual Self Assessment is calculated, the £3,130 is added to the Personal Allowance, increasing the tax-free slice of profit to £15,700 before any Income Tax is due. From April 2026, sole traders over the Making Tax Digital threshold report income through quarterly updates, but the allowance is still applied at the final declaration stage, so the saving is preserved exactly as it is today. As with employees, an unused portion can still be transferred to a spouse, which is especially valuable where a self-employed person has had a lean year and cannot use the full allowance against their own profit.
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