Child Tax Credit Help

KMeg76

My wife is expecting our first child in August and I have been trying to find out as much information as I can about Tax Credits we may be entitled to. From what I can gather we should be entitled to some CTC but what I am not sure about is when we apply I take it is our joint earnings but do they take into account that our joint earnings for this year until april 09 will be significantly less to the same period last year seeing as my wife will be on SMP for 6 months which is roughly £118 a week, a lot less than she would normally bring home. From what i have read it appears we have to use our earnings from apr 07 to apr 08 is this correct surely not as we will be far short of that this year and could do with the CTC to help.

Hopefully someone can clear this up for me thanks

mitchaa

Your award will be based on your 07/08 income yes.

It is possible to phone up afterwards and give them a projected estimate for this financial year, but in doing so and if you get it wrong, they will have you and you will be overpaid which would mean arrears for next years award. The £25k income disregard would not apply here as you've used the projected estimate method.

You basically need to work out what its going to say on your P60 come next April and what its going to say on your partners and then add £1-2k on top of that just to be on the safe side. (Bonus/OT?)

Your wife will have already earned full wage up until she came of on maternity so i suspect that is probably FT wage April/May/June so far? The remainder 9 months (Remember the 90% 6 wks rule) will be on maternity pay.

You can calculate how many weeks she receives solely only the £118 and deduct £100 from this (You do not need to declare £100 of the £118 whilst in receipt of SMP)

So if she received 26 wks worth of £118, you would only calculate 26x £18 for the award.