TC childcare - unfair £10/week increase rule

chiefnoodle

densol wrote: »

So all these child minders are all illegally defrauding the system too on a mass scale by colluding with clients AND paying their own tax and national insurance on artificially inflated incomes just so their client can claim a bit of extra tax credits ??? Think about it !

I'm not sure you understood what I wrote. I assume you're talking about the point I made right at the end about what I expect some people do (which is something which definitely seems wrong). However the point was that just for a few weeks they'd charge more, say providing a extra hour/week of childcare, the parent would pay this amount. Afterwards they'd stop the extra hour, drop the amount charged, and the parent now pays this new amount.

Even this I'm not convinced HMRC could claim was actual fraud, as its totally true and accurate, and you told them everything. The only thing is it seems pretty wrong as you're only making the arrangement to take advantage of the system to end up with more than 70% of your costs. Like all the tax loopholes companies exploit in cases where they are actually legal, which are still dodgy ethically

chiefnoodle

Deleted_User wrote: »

They will only update childcare costs of less than £10 at renewal time. So you can update it but not until April 2017.

Are you sure that at renewal time they'll update it? The lady on the HMRC phone line didn't say anything about that, she made it sound like they'd never update it unless there was another increase...

chiefnoodle

Darksparkle wrote: »

So where will your child go for this few weeks?

Wife is off work at the moment

Darksparkle

chiefnoodle wrote: »

Wife is off work at the moment

For what reason? Is she on paid leave?

chiefnoodle

Darksparkle wrote: »

For what reason? Is she on paid leave?

annual holiday

teddysmum

Could you take a few extra hours of care to bring the extra cost to the level acted on ?

chiefnoodle

teddysmum wrote: »

Could you take a few extra hours of care to bring the extra cost to the level acted on ?

Great idea, Will have to work out with wife if its practical etc. Thanks!

chiefnoodle

Darksparkle wrote: »

To be honest, it doesnt matter if it's fair. Lots of rules around benefits are unfair.

Yep. The point was that if you agree the rule is unfair, it wouldn't seem to be wrong to look for a (totally legal & honest) way to circumvent this unfairness. Whereas if the rule was a fair one then trying to get round it, albeit legally, would still be dodgy from a moral perspective.

Darksparkle

chiefnoodle wrote: »

Yep. The point was that if you agree the rule is unfair, it wouldn't seem to be wrong to look for a (totally legal & honest) way to circumvent this unfairness. Whereas if the rule was a fair one then trying to get round it, albeit legally, would still be dodgy from a moral perspective.

I don't agree that it's unfair though it wastes time and money for your award to be updated for a change of £4.84 max. For some it will be less than that because not everyone gets the full 70% help.

Making lots of small changes to your claim results in one off payments being issued that then lower your regular payments.

It's why they stopped people from constantly changing their bank details.

dippy3103

So, what if your childcare costs went down £10 a week? Is it still unfair if you get extra?