Pregnant with 1st baby. Do we get anything? what about the £190 grant?

melly1980

zagfles wrote: »

Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned the disregard because it's going to get very complicated. In previous years it was straightfowards - if you earn eg £40k then rather than putting £5k into your pension every year, you could alternate putting £10k into your pension one year, then nothing the next, then £10k the next etc and you would always be assessed on an income of £30k, rather than £35k! It seems some accountants were recommending this approach.

But now this isn't going to work as well because

a) the disregard is being cut - £10k now till April 2013 then £5k
b) there's going to a disregard for income falls from April 2012.

So this year you'll be assessed on £35.5k (you can phone them and give them this as an estimate, otherwise you'll have to wait till the 2012 renewal before getting the extra).

If you want to make use of the disregard while it's there, you could more put than £4k in this year, and correspondingly less next year, eg an extra £8k this year 2011/12 and no extra next 2012/13. Then both this year and next you'll be assessed on £31.5k (assuming you don't get a pay rise which takes your income over £41.5k). Obviously you'll need to work out whether you can afford this, it'll be a drop in income this year and a rise next year.

aye, and I also have to consider not being in 40~% tax rate so that I dont lose CB. I may have to put money into a pension to avoid that but I guess that problem is a year or two away.

cheers for your informative (as ever) reply :beer: