Cut the cost of childcare

Former_MSE_Archna

Do you spend masses on childcare costs every month? Childcare costs are a huge drain on the finances. Yet the little-known ‘Childcare Voucher' scheme can save you £1,000s on nursery fees or child minder costs every year.

If you're intrested in finding out if you can save money with nursery vouchers and would like to appear on It Pays To Watch this Wednesday please contact [EMAIL="casestudy@moneysavingproductions.com"]casestudy@moneysavingproductions.com[/EMAIL]


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gaily

Your email address is bouncing back saying it doesn't exist. Would like to respond if possible.

TEssery

I tried to email a case study using the link provided but I got an error message back saying "user unknown in virtual alias table". Might be worth checking at your end!

Best wishes

golddustmedia

Sadly I tried to get my employer to go for this and spoke with the HR manager and the finance director about it.

It went to the directors meeting but they did not take up the scheme

Shame as all the directors are parents themselves, guess they can afford childcare though.

ducky2004

Hi golddustmedia,

Your boss did not want to do it because they think it is complicated. Actually it is not, they only need to do 3 things (Rather than joining those expensive schemes runs by external companies), In fact, it saves them on Employer NI (I hope this cause their eyes to start blinking !)

(a) Setup salary sacrifice to very your employment arrangement
(b) Write a letter to the nursery you send your kids to, stating that they wish to purchase x hours of childcare.
(c) Deduct your salary accordingly, and save themself some NI ! (Save tax... I suppose they would be intereted ?)
(d) pay nursery by cheque (they can give that to you to hand it over) or by bacs
see here :

Say there are 10 employees including directors with an average earning of £2k, they would have saved around £2500 per month (£30k pa) in NI taxes...

Former_MSE_Archna

Hi guys sorry about that! The email address has been corrected! Alternatively you can PM me with your email address if you are happy for me to pass it on to the It Pays To Watch production team who will get in touch.

ccastley

Hi all,

A lot of employers aren't interested in this simply because it generates more admin even when they use a firm that does the majority of the admin for them (there are several who issue childcare vouchers). Even the local council wouldn't buy into it when I worked for them. Shocking as they employ nearly 20,000 local people.

A word of warning as well - these are fab if you are out of the tax credit bracket, but if you are getting help with your childcare costs from HMRC you won't be any better off. I'm not sure of the intricacies of it but I did look into it for myself and found out that those on a low income such as myself who are assisted with childcare costs by HMRC would end up being overpaid by them as it would ultimately affect your income. Just be aware of this.

Knowing Martin, the programme will flag all this up, but for those of you who may not get to see it (or take part!) it is worth looking in to.

HTH

Crystal

lisah31_2

I've just informed Tax Credits about our childcare vouchers and they told me that I have to reduce the salary sacrifice amount from the annual income, then reduce the nursery costs by the same amount. Ultimately, I think what this will mean is that we will get a disproportionately lesser amount of tax credit as we won't drop into the lower income band but will substantially reduce the childcare cost and so lower the Credits. Now debating if we might be better off not having the vouchers at all . . .

Former_MSE_Laura_1

The email address is [EMAIL="casestudy@moneysavingproductions.com"]casestudy@moneysavingproductions.com[/EMAIL]

Hope to hear from you soon

Former_MSE_Archna

Hi guys,

If anyone is thinking about claiming childcare vouchers or knows anyone that is, and would like some help. Please get in touch. Thanks.

Quillion

I have sent an email.