Childcare Vouchers and the Living Wage

sheerhunnery

Hi there,

My child was born last April and I started sacrificing £100 of my salary a month through my employer's childcare voucher scheme. My wife went back to work a month ago and she started doing the same, and my child started nursery at the same time. Our nursery fees are £430 a month. I realised I'd need to pay more so changed my salary sacrifice to £200.

When I was next paid no vouchers had been sacrificed from my pay. After the usual passing the buck of all concerned I eventually got to the bottom of it and it turns out because the Living Wage has been introduced my rate per hour would be below the LW after my vouchers have been deducted. However I realised a previous pay had missed a payment too when it was only £100, and that was for the same reason.

In summary, I earn around £16,000 and it would appear unless I do 25/30 hours overtime per month I can't even sacrifice £100 a month as I'll be earning below the Living Wage. We're not eligible for Tax Credits as we "earn too much" so it appears we're being punished for going out and both of us working full-time.

My question is are there any ways round this, any current schemes that I can enter into? My wife's vouchers are OK as she earns enough to cover hers.

There must be many people like me who earn "reasonably" and work full-time. Can anybody give me any advice please?

Thanks in advance.

1trainer1

We get childcare vouchers through our salary sacrifice scheme at work, it is good but unfortunately not enough.

I would suggest you also check to see if you are entitled to any assistance in my instance the nursery cost £50 a day and we send our little one twice a week so it will cost us over the year £5200, and when you are getting paid £16,000 then that is a very big chunk of your wage.

Our mortgage is cheaper than our nursery fees but that's a whole other story

Mupette

When I was next paid no vouchers had been sacrificed from my pay. After the usual passing the buck of all concerned I eventually got to the bottom of it and it turns out because the Living Wage has been introduced my rate per hour would be below the LW after my vouchers have been deducted. However I realised a previous pay had missed a payment too when it was only £100, and that was for the same reason.

check with hmrc and or the childcare voucher company that you employer can do that plus living wage starts in April.

Is t

sheerhunnery

I think my employer is right, they told me HMRC wouldn't let them give me a wage below the minimum wage (the woman I spoke to in central HR probably meant this if the Living Wage hasn't started yet). I don't earn a great deal above whatever the current minimum wage is but I'm still unsure why certain months it was ok to take off my wage. They said they could email my branch HR the calculations but I had to rush back to work and haven't had a chance to see them again.

What annoys me is that the vouchers are only any use if you earn a decent wage. Tax credits are only viable if you don't earn much. So what do people like me do who earn an "average" amount? I can't see any help out there at all.

Mupette

you are right about the vouchers not being allowed below the nmw.

But unless your employer already used living wage, which i cant see how they can if they did allow you vouchers before. Why are they using that reason if living wage is not being introduced until April?

sheerhunnery

Apologies, only just seen this reply.

I'm not sure to be honest. My wage fluctuates a bit so I may have only just qualified the other months unwittingly. I've had a few sporadic holidays too and apparently holiday pay and sick pay are unaffected by minimum wage requirements.

Not much I can do about it by the looks of it unfortunately.