Childcare vouchers
AngelOfTheNorth
Forumite 199 Posts
Just wondering if someone can give me a bit of help with this. Basically, I know how the system works when you're spending £55 a week or more on childcare, but not otherwise!
Husband and I have one child who will be going to nursery in January for a couple of sessions a week, until August when she'll get a free school nursery place. Privately paying, not eligible for any free hours, better off doing it this way than tax credits. Husband's work offers vouchers, mine doesn't, so we'd be on one lot only. Basic rate tax.
The childcare itself will be £30 per week, plus £4 for meals, so £34 total. I know that the maximum amount of vouchers that can be claimed is £55 a week, so obviously we'd ask for less than this. And the maximum saving is £930 annually, or about £18 a week. Daughter will attend for about 32 weeks total, at £34 a week, so the total cost will be roughly £1100 including food, £1000 if not.
So my questions are:
1. Firstly, is £30 or £34 the relevant figure here? I'm not sure if we include food or not.
2. Secondly, as we're not spending £55 a week, am I right in thinking the saving to us would be a bit less than the roughly £18 a week it would be if we were? Even though we will spend more than £930 on the childcare over the year? I'm assuming there isn't a way for us to simply get £930 off the whole bill and just pay the remainder. I just want to know for budgeting purposes. I'd been working on the assumption that we'd save about three fifths of the maximum weekly total as we'd only be using three fifths of the vouchers, ie a saving of about £12 a week max.
Any advice much appreciated!
Husband and I have one child who will be going to nursery in January for a couple of sessions a week, until August when she'll get a free school nursery place. Privately paying, not eligible for any free hours, better off doing it this way than tax credits. Husband's work offers vouchers, mine doesn't, so we'd be on one lot only. Basic rate tax.
The childcare itself will be £30 per week, plus £4 for meals, so £34 total. I know that the maximum amount of vouchers that can be claimed is £55 a week, so obviously we'd ask for less than this. And the maximum saving is £930 annually, or about £18 a week. Daughter will attend for about 32 weeks total, at £34 a week, so the total cost will be roughly £1100 including food, £1000 if not.
So my questions are:
1. Firstly, is £30 or £34 the relevant figure here? I'm not sure if we include food or not.
2. Secondly, as we're not spending £55 a week, am I right in thinking the saving to us would be a bit less than the roughly £18 a week it would be if we were? Even though we will spend more than £930 on the childcare over the year? I'm assuming there isn't a way for us to simply get £930 off the whole bill and just pay the remainder. I just want to know for budgeting purposes. I'd been working on the assumption that we'd save about three fifths of the maximum weekly total as we'd only be using three fifths of the vouchers, ie a saving of about £12 a week max.
Any advice much appreciated!
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What you could also do is to claim more than you need each month and let the money accumulate for future use. So if you know that you'll need £1100 in total then you could claim £220 a month for five months. The money will accumulate in your childcare voucher account and then you can send as much as you need each month onto the childcare provider.
And I would have thought that if the nursery charges extra for meals then you should be able to pay for this extra with your vouchers.
And the exact saving is simply the amount of income tax and national insurance that you would normally pay on the amount of the voucher.
Also remember that the vouchers are still useful once the child is at school because it can be used to pay for holiday clubs and breakfast/afterschool clubs.
:huh: :huh:
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