Child Care Vouchers

Stevep4

Although I work for a major UK company with thousands of employees, there is no current plan for the company to start operating a child care voucher scheme (such as BusyBees).

Because of this, It is costing me approx. £80 extra each month in childcare costs since I must pay with net earnings. The childcare voucher allows for gross earnings to be used, therefore reducing tax and NI contributions.

Is there any tax refund I can claim in my self asseeement ?? Anything else I can do??

Stylistic_2

Hiya,
My husband went on to www.childcarechoice.co.uk and there is a link that you click on and you fill your company details in and it sends an email to that person explaining the benefits of childcare vouchers.

the more people you get to fill this in, the more likely it is they'll look at the scheme because as I understand it - it doesn't cost the employer anything. Any admin costs come out of their National Insurance savings?

I found the link!!!

http://www.childcarechoice.co.uk/refer_employer.html

:T

daveyjp

IIRC if you can't get childcare vouchers you will get enhanced child tax credit payments.

Its a shame a large UK company isn't a member of the scheme - hardly setting a good example for work life balance are they? My wife works for a company employing 15. She went back to work and they set up the system immediately.

honeypop

There are only 6 of us at my place of work and even we manage to run a childcare voucher scheme.

Operating a scheme such as Busybees is only one option the government allow, there is another way, how we do it is that the company print off a 'homemade' voucher stating employee name and value of childcare, we then hand this in as 'payment' to the childcarer, they deduct this amount off the fees and return the voucher to the employer who then forwards payment to the childcarer on receipt of the voucher. The amount is then deducted from the employees monthly pay.

It is very simple to run, a large company should have no problem.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/helpsheets/e18.pdf is a link to the HMRC helpbook on providing help with childcare, maybe you could get someone in HR to understand how simple it is to administer.