Child care vouchers - not fair I loose the £243 I had before as I changed jobs

p1tse

I changed jobs, and previously was able to get the full £243 child care vouchers, but am annoyed as I can only obtain £124 due to new legislation from April 11, as I will be a new registration with new company as can't carry forward my previous benefit.

rant rant!

thunderbird

I take it you are a higher tax payer? If so, there's nothing you can do it - just another one of the things you need to weigh up when moving jobs unfortunately.

FBaby

I share your frustration. I considered using childcare vouchers when I moved with my partner and wasn't entitled to any child benefits any longer (was only entitled to the minimum £45 a month before anyway!), but we then decided to try for a baby and also I faced redundancy so decided not to take the risk. Then I was given my job permanently and we decided to forget about the baby plans, so starting thinking of it again... passed a couple of weeks adujsting to new role, and when I went to apply, found out about the change that took place in April..... without one bit of notice to the public (and certainly nothing internally within the company). This is what makes me cross... all the publicity about reduction of tax credits etc... but this went very quiet....what a surprise when those most affected are those on higher salaries anyway and the state of mind seems to be that because we are doing ok, we should shut up and put up with it.

So yep, understand your rant!!!!

Judith_W

Actually, the reduction to £124 was a u-turn from the government intention of completely scrapping vouchers for HR tax payers from a year ago. Its a shame your company didn't communicate, I know our company really pushed it for a couple of months before the changes.

p1tse

i've asked new employer if i can continue with old provider they said no

i then decided to ask my old provider if there is anything i could do, no

so it's another rubbish change by our lovely government to feed themselves and the banks and pay out bonuses instead!

Tebheag

Be warned also that your employer can change the childcare voucher company too I have heard of this happen and a lot of people have lost out nothing that they could do about it.

p1tse

Tebheag wrote: »

Be warned also that your employer can change the childcare voucher company too I have heard of this happen and a lot of people have lost out nothing that they could do about it.

that would be rubbish

Judith_W

If your company changes childcare voucher provider this should have no impact as it is the contract with your employer that matters! I don't know what they are trying on but it's not right, the provider is simply the administrator, this could be someone in the company but they have just chosen to outsource, it def makes no difference.

clw1

Agreed - my hubby is changing jobs and so we lose out on the childcare vouchers too, sadly not much we can do about it.

Spendless

As someone said, this is a U turn from how it was initially proposed, and it was the last Government's idea not this one, though it's only come in to force this year and the new Government stuck with it. I signed the petition against it and got an email back so I knew of the changes. The details were also on this site somewhere. My husband's company also wrote to him a few months before April to tell him as we have used childcare vouchers in the past. As we may use them again in the future, I had thought that they just had the standard tax relief on them (22% ish) whether you were high rate payer or not. Reading what's been put here, I am thinking that you can have 40% on them but only for a maximum of £124. Is this correct?

Judith_W

Yup, initially they sold it as saving the same amount of tax so ppl assumed it would be 20% like a basic rate tax payer, but they calculated the savings then applied to the lower amount so it would be the same amount. They just didn't think about the NI which means in the end BR save more.