Childcare Vouchers: cut childcare costs by £1,000/year Discussion Area

moomi

i can find plenty sites that will tell me what i'll save but cant find anything to work out what my reduced salary will be. can anyone help or work it out for me? i get £1230 a month gross & claim £55 a week in salary sacrifice. hud
sband also in same scheme & he gets £1 gross & claims £45 a week childcare.

moomi

oops i mean he gets £2170 gross a month thanks

Savvy_Sue

moomi, have you read the article on the main site? There are links to several calculators there, including an HMRC one which might answer your question.

Yorkshire-Lady_3

All registered childminder can take vouchers. You do not need to take any extra courses. If your childminder is not happy to take them, then check that they are
1 - Registered with Ofsted, or
2 - Registered with the tax office!

If they are reluctant to take vouchers, it's probably the latter.

lucysmumwork

I work for a local authority and they run the scheme and my husband works for a newspaper and he also claims these vouchers, though we both use different providers (Sodexho and Busy Bees). You really do save money (about 30% for every £1000 spent on childcare!!) but one thing to mention about tax credits. As the vouchers comes off your wages before you are taxed, it is not taxable income, so when you claim your tax credits you need to tell them you earn whatever you earn AFTER VOUCHERS. For example my husband earns £21800 but taking off vouchers he takes home £18900 (before tax and ni) so this is what we tell the tax cedits he earns. We have claimed vouchers now for two years, though I have had to just stop mine as I am pregnant again and going on leave in May - this is the only way I can get out of my salary sacrifice scheme (a life change ie death, birth, marriage etc). This is how the IR told us to claim and we do. With regard to surplus, personally ours lasts for twelve months and we switched nurseries about a year ago and ended up with about £300 but the old nursery just refunded us this money. To use these vouchers the nursery must be registered with the local authority as well as the voucher's provider. Our current nursery doesnt accept online vouchers (which was easier but we just receive the vouchers in the post a few days after payday) and they didnt use Busy Bees at the time but it was just a case of filling a form in. I see no reason why employers and childcare providers wouldnt use these schemes as they will get more business as more and more parents are using them. Sometimes though when I am trying to explain it to friends with children, because they dont get cash in hand (like Tax Credits) they struggle to see the benefit, and some people dont like the idea that this money comes off their wages, but you save so much.

ianmr65

I left my employer about 6 months ago, with about £600 in the accor childcare vouchers account. I don't need them anymore, and want to get a refund. Accor say they are not able to do this, and i have to claim through my employer. My ex-employer says i need to talk to accor.

Anyone else been in this situation, if so what's the best way of getting my money back

Thanks

ian

Snafflepants

ernie-money wrote: »

Hi,
I have spoken to my employer, who is very good at looking after their staff, and after looking into this, they said that apparently they have to pay a certain amount of your salary, before you can claim any vouchers. I can't remember the exact figures, but say for instance that you have to get paid £90 per week in the usual manner, and are only able to claim vouchers on any pay over this amount. Their view on this was that in that case only higher paid staff members would benefit from the sceme, and therefore they did not want to start it.
Does anyone know anymore about this, if it's correct and if there's any way around it? As only work part time, I am not at the higher end of the pay scale and am therefore not sure that the vouchers would actually be of that much use to me if this is the case...
Thanks!

Hiya, I'm really confused by what your employer has said.

I use busy bee vouchers and the money for my child care comes out of my monthly wages.

Busy Bees send a bill for the amount of my childcare fees. They are above the £267 monthly threshold - approx £300 a month.

My employer send the money across and it appears in my online account a few days later. The money is then taken out of my wages and I get paid the rest. The Tax and NI on the £267 are not taken by the IR and the remained £33 is taxed etc.

It saves me approximately £60 a month. We could save more if we both did the vouchers but it never got sorted.

I am confused why how much you earn should affect how much you benefit? (obviously if you don't earn if enough to cover the fees you couldn't pay them out of your wages). If you pay £300 in child care surely you are better off if you can get tax relief on £267 of it regardless of whether you earn high or low? If you pay it direct to the nursery you are paying the full £300 whereas through BusyBees you are saving the tax and NI relief. Sounds like a cop out to me? I also thoguht that employers get a benefit out of it (but payroll tell its a small relief only)

Maybe I am missing the point?

ianmr65

ianmr65 wrote: »

I left my employer about 6 months ago, with about £600 in the accor childcare vouchers account. I don't need them anymore, and want to get a refund. Accor say they are not able to do this, and i have to claim through my employer. My ex-employer says i need to talk to accor.

Anyone else been in this situation, if so what's the best way of getting my money back

Thanks

ian

Anyboy?... surely someone must have been in this situation??

Steve_O_5

Do you know any childminders that might let you pay them the vouchers, they can give you cash back minus a small fee.

ianmr65

Thanks Steve,

I had thought of that but, was looking to see if there was a more above board solution, it lloks as if it may come to it tho.

Anyone else have a view?

cheers

ian