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Am I entitled to both

mitzii
Posts: 4 Newbie

I am currently on maternity leave and the lady I job share with has asked if I would like to work 2 days instead of 3 however this means that my working week will be 14 hours but she has told me that that I include my hour lunch break when claiming tax credits so it would in fact be 16 hours and therefore I would be entitled to working and child tax credits. Does anyone know if this is correct?
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Comments
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Depends on your contract but most contracts say lunch breaks are UNpaid and take you below the 16 hours you need for tax credits.. Rather than relying on the opinion of someone with a vested interest I'd suggest you discuss it with your HR department.
II Would Rather Climb A Mountain Than Crawl Into A Hole
MSE Florida wedding .....no problem0 -
If you allow for the fact there are more days some months than others would that make a difference? The other thing would be to do some hours doing something else like secret shopper to top the hours up, I have seen that mentioned on here a few times.although I don't know the details of it.Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it!0
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I think she is wrong- it's the number of hours you work each week- your lunch breaks don't count. I'd suggest you take advice from Tax Credits themselves rather than risk not qualifying for WTC.0
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Thank you for your responses. I think I will call the Tax people tomorrow to clarify the matter.0
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Hello, unless you're paid for lunch breaks they do not count towards tax credit hour requirements.
I used to work 18 hours in a school over 3 and a half days but when I wanted to have more time at home (I'm a carer) I had to swap my hours around a bit because even though I was at work during lunch breaks I wasn't paid for them so I still needed to be paid for working the16 hours each week.
I ended up spreading the 16 hours over 5 mornings so I wasn't there whilst not being paid during dinner time which gave me what I needed at the time.
Good luck, Tehya0 -
Oh I forgot to mention if you have a partner living with you who works their hours are counted too. So say you were working 14 hours and he was working 20 you'd actually be counted as working over 30 hours and then you'd qualify for the little bit extra you get for working 30 or more hours per week.
Tehya0
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