Advice on benefits / returning to work after mat leave

april7176

Hi there,

I wonder if anyone can give me any advice at all as we are completely at a loss as to what to do.

I am due to return from maternity leave in January next year after having our first child and I have to make a decision about how many hours etc I want to go back for. I was previously working shifts but they will not accomodate me working part time of shifts and want to me go back on 9-5 hours. I do not want to work full time and changing to 9-5 will significantly reduce my salary. My full time salary with shift allowances was almost £30k. The full time salary for 9-5 is around £20k so part time I will be looking in the region of £8-12k depending on the number of hours I workl!! My partner currently earns £25k pa - £1600 pm net.

Our mortgage is £750 a month and other basic costs - bills & food are another £850 a month. Then there are costs such as petrol etc. So approx £2k per month basic living costs!!!

I am looking for advice on how many hours it is advisable to return to work in order to get the best amount of tax benefits as we will have to pay for full child care for any 9-5 hours that I work. Financially I do not think we can manage on the amount of money I will earn minus the child care so the benefits will be very important to work out if we can survive financially.

I have tried using some of the calculators that are available online but these are very hard to use as I am trying to use a projected salary and won't know NI, pension etc etc contributions. When I did manage to input estimated details it came up that we would get the same amount of child tax credit as we are currently receiving from my previous years income??!! Surely this can't be correct!?

Also, what additional help is there with the child care costs? I understand I can get the child care vouchers from my salary through work but don't understand much about this. Our child care costs should be £25 per day.

I hope this makes some sense as I am totally and utterly confused myself at the moment and just don't know what to do. Anymore info needed to help us with any advice I will be more than happy to give if anyone can help us.

Thanks so much in advance.

April

DaisyFlower

Over 25k you only get basic tax credits so by adding your wages whether full time or part time wont make any difference to tax credits unless it takes you over the maximum salary bracket and then they would stop.

flea72

CTC are based on your gross income, so you dont need to know how much tax/NI you are paying for those purposes, but for your own information use this website

https://www.listentotaxman.com

as said above, just based on your partners income, you will only be entitled to the basic rate of CTC, let alone factoring in your income on top

Tax credits taper from about £15.5k, and stop when you have an income of £50k. so no matter what you earn between those two figures, there is very little difference in what you will get CTC wise. the only things that make a difference to the amount you are entitled to, are the number of children you have and any disabilities

Flea