Childcare vouchers whilst on maternity leave

Savvy_Sue

Certainly if it WASN'T offered to all staff, you'd have to have a darned good non-discriminatory reason for not doing so. Excluding part-timers would not be such a reason.

PaulaJ65

SMP is calculated on your NI'able Pay and not your Gross Pay so if you have salary sacrifice for anything (Pension deductions, Cycle2Work, Childcare Vouchers) it will reduce your average pay for SMP purposes, but if your employer has a good Occupational Maternity Scheme (OMP) then it will rectify any shortfall within the OMP.
For example, my employer tops up the SMP payment to make it 8 weeks full pay, 16 weeks half pay plus SMP then 15 weeks at SMP only - the SMP average is reduced due to salary sacrifice deductions as HMRC state you work it out on NI'able pay but the Company uses your annual salary to calculate what you are due minus the SMP amount so the OMP amount is higher than it would be if you were not in a salary sacrifice scheme.
Childcare Vouchers are due to any employee within the Company who offer them - infact if you and your partner work for the same Company you can both claim the maximum £243 per month making it a much better benefit.
The ruling over not being allowed to recover any salary sacrifice schemes from SMP only (or SSP too) only came into force recently - as much as I can see why an employer must hate this ruling it is there and employees can use it. You can "stock pile" your childcare vouchers so there is no problem if your are on maternity leave and not using any of them during that period.
Anyone who earns below £602 per month will not pay NI anyway so there isn't much point in them being in a salary sacrifice scheme anyway. One thing to note, if you are just above the NI threshold of £602 per month and can sacrifice some of your pay for pension etc it is worth noting that if you drop below the NI threshold and therefore pay no further NI contributions, that could effect any state pension you will be due in years to come.
Hope this helps

ginster

Hi, please can someone advise where i can prove that my employer will be obligated to continue paying my Childcare vouchers when I am on maternity leave. I work for a large organisation and do not intend to abuse the system by increasing my vouchers but would like my daugher to stay at nursery but my company HR dept is saying they don't pay it. Thanks

rpc

It's the Sex Discrimination Act.

About 30 seconds on google found this:
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/employers/sml-salary-sacrifice.pdf

It is spelled out in black and white - non-cash benefits (which childcare vouchers are) must be provided during OML and AML.

ginster

Thanks RPC, i found this after posting but was still not 100% so great to get another person opinion. cheers