Tax free child care - change in circumstances

Mistermeaner

Some advice please

I 'claim' tax free child care to pay for breakfast and after school clubs for my kids. I do the quarterly reassessment as required, last completed in Jan

Due to an unexpectedly large bonus due to be paid March this year my 25/26 income will be 100K+ …… each time i filled in the declarations i was honest and correct that throuhgout 25/26 my income was sub 100K…. it however now wont be due to this final payment in march - what if anything do i need to do?

For the next assessment i would again be honest and advise my income was 100K+ but do i need to go back and somehow retrospectively correct my prior declarations? Do i need to pay back any prior government top ups?

Thanks

Strummer22

I think you would just answer truthfully when you reconfirm - that's assuming you're happy missing out on the tax free childcare (and the 30 hours per week free childcare if you make us of this).

If you want to keep the tax free childcare then put enough into your pension and/or give enough away to charity to get your adjusted net income to below £100,000. If doing this via pension, do it before 5th April. Charity donations can count for the previous tax year, but only if you have not yet submitted your return (i.e. you're not supposed to do it via an amended return).

Mistermeaner

Thanks i'll do that…. the funny thing is that i'll next reconfirm in apr/may and they'll ask me about my expected income for tax year 26/27 which will be <100k…… so i am answering honestly at the time of answering

Its a pretty flawed system! Why didn't they just incorporate this into self assessment or something

NB we dont use the 30hours free childcare and only spend about £800 a year on afterschool club so the £ is in the noise really i just dont want to end up getting fined for failure to disclose or similar

sheramber

contact the Tax Free Childcare Helplinrle

https://www.gov.uk/find-hmrc-contacts/childcare-service-helpline

Mistermeaner

hi in case anyone in a similar boat …

phoned HMRC by the link above (thanks sheramber) on hold a bit and transferred but when I spoke with correct person and explained the situation the response was along the lines of ;

thanks for letting us know you’ve done the right thing, just don’t use your account for the remainder of the tax year now you know you will be over the 100k. Reconfirm elligibility or otherwise at the next review point (apr /may) and give us a call if you expect to be over 100k next tax year. If I use the account it may trigger an investigation by ‘compliance’ and I may need to pay back government bonus but they have this call on record so I won’t be in any trouble