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

Craig_Bunce_1983

I am thinking about sending my child to a childminder through my job i would get £243 tax free but im so confused..

I would pay around 300 per month for child care.
Using the vouchers i would get the first 243 tax free at a basic tax rate ( how much would I actually save)

Using the goverment help they said i would get around 100 per month of help.

What is better for me?

Please help

rpc

What government help? Do you mean Child Tax Credits?

If you are eligible for both Child Tax Credits and Childcare Vouchers, you are often better of with CTC. That doesn't always hold though and does depend on circumstances (e.g. my family are best off taking two full lots of vouchers AND CTC, not just CTC on its own).

Best thing you can do is run through the benefits calculator with two scenarios - one where you claim vouchers and one where you don't.

katpat23

I think this scheme would be good for us, but I don't understand how one gets a "registered" au pair so that we can take advantage of the tax benefits via the childcare voucher scheme.

Any ideas?

rpc

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ofsted+au+pair+registration

See bottom question on http://www.bapaa.org.uk/displaypage.asp?page=5

dotty12_2

Hi
My wife and I get child tax credit which contains an element to help with child care. We pay around £140 per week for nursery care - so far so good.

Like Billy the Bunter in post #402 I am the owner of a limited company. I am the sole director, employee and shareholder.
I draw a low salary and no more. My wife has a minimum wage job for 30hrs per week.
As director of the limited company how do I set things up to pay myself in childcare vouchers? How do I start the process of crunching the numbers to work out the optimum amount of childcare vouchers to pay myself? Is there an easy to use website that would help me?

Any comments would be welcome.
Cheers
Dotty

rpc

dotty12 wrote: »

Hi
My wife and I get child tax credit which contains an element to help with child care. We pay around £140 per week for nursery care - so far so good.

Usually, if you get the childcare element of WTC (which is not the same as child tax credits - CTC) then you would be worse off if you moved to vouchers.

See http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/childcare-costs#warning

dotty12_2

Thanks for that, but I would like to find out how to crunch the numbers and fine tune the calculations to optimise things.

Cheers
Dotty

dotty12_2

Hi RPC. I just noticed the link in your post. I see your point. However, I would still like to find out how to calculate things down to the last penny.
Which reminds me of another question. How do we calculate how much we should be getting in work credit, child credit and so on?
We get a statement from HMRC but it just presents bald figures. I would love to see the calculations. Just like my Maths teacher used to want to see my working out.
The reason is simple, I can adjust my income, and my wife can adjust her hours, so that we can optimise things.
Cheers
Dotty

rpc

If you want a rough answer, use the tables at http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/Taxcredits/people-advise-others/entitlement-tables/index.htm and interpolate. You should be pretty close.

If you want the proper anwer, you really need to run through the calculator for multiple scenarios http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/taxcredits/payments-entitlement/entitlement/question-how-much.htm

Wootball

Sorry, this is about to be a basic question but I'm finding Childcare Vouchers so confusing.

Myself and my wife are both lower rate tax payers - me on 30k and her on 24k. Our daughter is due to start at nursery in March, which will cost £410 per month.

We can both get up to £243 per month as I understand it - but is it worth us both claiming the maximum even though we only need £410? If not, what configuration would save us the most money (as in, me claiming £243 and her claiming £167 or vice versa if you see what I mean)?

Basically, what would save us the most?