New childcare tax break to be announced by the Government today - what do you think?

LovesBeing - currently vouchers can be used to pay for any qualifying childcare with the right kind of registration - so after school childminder, various summer clubs etc. I think up to age 16 although you might struggle to spend the whole amount once they're in school.

Just seen another report that stars its only for children under 5, don't the current vouchers help with 5+ as well?

Difficult to know if its good or not. It says up to 2k per year per child. So could be less than that. If I could get 2k for each of my children (we have 3) part of me thinks brilliant, while another part thinks that not only would that ne highly unlikely it would also be inappropriate.

At the moment we do maximum salary sacrifice, so roughly I reckon we save about £100 per month for a higher tax payer and half that for a lower rate payer, so for us roughly £150 per month or £1800 per year. If that is way out, please correct me. If the new deal saves me much less than that, I will be working to pay childcare. Not really what they are allegedly aiming to do.

I will watch this carefully. Having lost cb, I don't really want to end up bringing home less than it costs to work. I do want to maintain my career, but the existing costs (stress, guilt, less time with kids etc) is already high and this could tip the balance into becoming unemployed. In my line of work, being out for more than a year is career ending.

it won't help people with disabled children as child care is more expensive

Er, this is less good than the current offer if you have one child. I started claiming Childcare Vouchers in 2010, at the maximum £243/month from my gross salary - that's £2916 pa (tax saved £933). DH (Higher Rate taxpayer) only got round to claiming just over a year ago and so he gets £1484 pa (tax saved £623). Until today we also got CB = £1050. Total upfront saving/benefit = £2606. After tax charge = £1556.

DC2, due September, will not materially change the above figures, apart from that we will claim second child rate CB and pay it back in DH's Self-Assessment. Total upfront saving/benefit to us will be something just over £3k.

If you put childcare costs purely on the parents' tax bills, the saving on Employer NI disappears. The payment of the voucher during subsequent periods of maternity leave will presumably also disappear, because the income earned to offset to tax will be reduced.

Rubbish, in my view. And I also strongly disagree with the relaxation of monitoring and ratios for carers:children, especially in the early years.

So is this only for women then? I don't work, full time student, DH currently claims the maximum in childcare vouchers. Can I transfer this to him instead?

I think it is a really good idea - and I say that as someone who uses no childcare and will lose CB.

I would rather have vouchers than have to claim it back at the end of the year.

Why must they mess with systems that work to replace them with systems that are harder for the average person to do?

Well, that's less than the current voucher allowance for 2 adults, assuming you are claiming for 2 children. So I'm not impressed.

It does make sense to have an allowance per child (are they going to restrict it for larger families though, like child tax allowances?). But it's nowhere near enough. £2k could be just 2 months worth of nursery fees for a full time child.

I'd rather they didn't muck about with child benefit.

It's a smokescreen to take the attention off the changes to child benefit, which, lets face it,is only a matter if time till they lower and lower the salary threshold until it becomes means tested [cynical emoticon]

I guess it depends on the detail and how much better off we will be