...fed up at having to pay childminder full

[Tinkerbellone]

My child minder stopped working two weeks ago because of worries about corona virus.
She or her partner have no health conditions.
I am a key worker.
She always charges half rate over school holidays even though she doesn't have my children.
She is still charging me Full Rate even though she not working or having my children at all.
I know she has a business to run, but this doesn't seem fair to me; I could understand half pay.
As a single parent I'm struggling to get my children to and from school now. I'm relying on friends and/or my children walking on their own after I've left for work in the morning they are 11 & 8.
Has anyone else experienced this?

I am paying my childminder in full because I am still being paid in full. She still has bills to pay. My child is so happy with her so I want her to still have a business when this is all over. If I wasn't being paid in full then it would be a different situation.
I live in quite a small area and the childminders all socialise with each other. They have made an agreement with each other that if parents drop one of them, and cease payments, then none of the others will take the children when this is over. Those parents will struggle to find childcare in the future. Individual cicumstances are being taken into account so, if parents are struggling financially, that wouldn't be deemed as 'dropping' childminder.
My attitude to my childminder may not be the same as other people though. I don't see her a service I am paying for (although I realise I am!) I see her as an important part of my child's life and a friend and will do what I can to make sure she's ok.

Another screenshot to clarify that self employed workers are entitled to claim the 80% grant and continue to trade.

Again, not condoning the charging of 100% fees if no work is carried out! I'm a peri teacher and I'm lucky enough to be able to carry on teaching some students online, but will still claim the 80% grant because I have already lost some work and am uncertain about my future. I wouldn't expect to still invoice students for the next term if I wasn't able to carry out any type of service at all (although I would be utterly screwed if that was the case!).

I wouldn’t pay her , neither would I offer her 50% . There’ll be plenty of childminders with available spaces when this is all over .
2/3 of income on expenses ? I don’t believe this at all . There are disadvantages for exploiting self employment loopholes . You reap what you sow !

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/how-citizens-advice-works/citizens-advice-consumer-work/the-consumer-rights-act-2015/

Covers services not provided

To those who implied that I've fiddled my tax return. I have never, ever fiddled my tax return. I have only claimed what I've been legally allowed to claim.

I currently earn £160 a week for childminding. £20 a week of that goes on expenses that I must continue even if I'm not working.

My profit over the last 3 years (£30 a week) is so low because of the thousands of pounds it's cost me to set up in my first year as well as all of the other genuine expenses I have claimed.

My circumstances are such that because I have two young disabled children it is incredibly difficult to get work outside of the home or do long hours childminding. I have to keep my setting small because otherwise my own children wouldn't cope. My children need me to be there morning, noon and night, far more than other children of their age would normally need.

The only option I have is to try and earn as much as I can with whatever I have left to give and when time allows.

It's actually really upset me to see childminders vilified on here and to see some of you on here imply that I'm a tax dodger. I have always been completely honest with my tax returns as, I've always been the sort of person who worries themselves sick if they put a foot wrong and if I went to prison, what an earth would happen to my two very dependant children if I wasn't there?

Anyway OP, as I said before, try to negotiate. If I was your childminder, I wouldn't be charging you.

Reading this thread has made me really appreciate the clients that I do have. I am so glad they they are nothing like some of the people on here!

If you pay her ,she will claim the 80% too.

Another screenshot to clarify that self employed workers are entitled to claim the 80% grant and continue to trade.

That means they will trade after furlough- not trade as well as furlough

Anyone self employed can deduct lots of expenses if they work from home, and actually end up on paper with very little taxable profit, and to be honest most people with a brain deduct as much as they legally can get away with
Your own words, 'get away with'! Whatever you claim as expenses, you need to assume is as is. You cant cry when the amount of expenses claim mean you are now getting less. You cant have it both ways.

Saying that, regardless of how income is declared, there are amazing CMs who work really hard and treat the kids like their own families. I had wonderful CMs growing up and my kids had a fantastic one for a short time too.

They have made an agreement with each other that if parents drop one of them, and cease payments, then none of the others will take the children when this is over.

That is a possibly a cartel and illegal.

Cartels involve companies acting together to restrict competition in a way that affects trade. It is both a civil and a criminal offence in the UK. The civil offence contained in the 1989 Competition Act closely mirrors article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)

That means they will trade after furlough- not trade as well as furlough

There is no furlough if you're self employed @BringMe Sunshine. It's a grant and can be applied for if earnings have dropped due to the virus.

I’m still paying my childminder 100%. I can work from home for full pay (non key worker role so can be done from home but no free school day childcare offered) and it wasn’t her choice to close - it was a government decision.

As difficult as it is to support primary age children with home learning whilst on numerous video and conference calls a day, none of this is my childminders fault. She has a home to run and a family to feed just like we all do. No one could have predicted that one day many many businesses would be forcibly shut with very little notice. It’s unprecedented and before now, unimaginable.

I expect if she gets the 80% from government this will be deducted from a future bill... I trust her with my children, I can certainly trust her with this.

I would stop paying her.
In these circumstances she is being v unfair charging you full fees.

This from an email I was sent:

You can’t apply for the scheme yet - HMRC will contact you if they think you’re eligible. They’ll tell you when you’ll get it - it might not be until June 2020.

Anyone who's been trading for less than a year can't apply. It's quite nerve-wracking having to wait to see if you're on the 'eligible' list - even as someone who fits all the criteria, so it's understandable that people might be panicking and possibly not thinking straight. I'm not saying for a minute that the OPs childminder should be charging 100% but it's very scary having the financial rug pulled out from under your feet when there's no clear guarantee of help for eight weeks (or five if you take the Universal Credit route).

I currently earn £160 a week for childminding. £20 a week of that goes on expenses that I must continue even if I'm not working
Out of curiosity, which expenses are these? I think a number of childminders claim some rent in their expenses because they can, but few have moved to a bigger house purely for the purpose of their job. This is an easy thing to claim as an expense when really, it is not a business expense and something they would have to pay childminding or not.

I think it would be totally reasonable to ask for 50% monthly to be paid back in June in full or discounted from future months.

There are some childminding expenses which HMRC have specifically agreed to and which won't vanish overnight just because the business is closed - for a full time cm the big ones are 10% of rent, council tax and water rates and 33% of gas and electricity. The other big one is mileage or car costs (depending on how you do it). No you obviously won't be driving around incurring petrol costs but the running costs of the car - possible including a lease - don't vanish instantly

So self-employed workers have been claiming expenses that weren't really just about business expenses, in order to deduct as much as possible from taxes, and therefore when a tax-based benefit is assigned, they don't make as much because they've been underdeclaring their profits vs. expenses for years.

Cry me a river.

@MediocreOmens that's not entirely true. HMRC have dispensations, which allow you to quite legally write off an absolute shit ton of expenses that aren't in fact costing you anything.

Example:

£4.50/hour 40 hours 3 children = £540/week

From that:

10% (£54) is non-taxable as a supposed 'wear and tear' on your house
Cleaning products on top of that (even though you need them anyway)
33% of your electricity and gas bill - maybe £12/week
10% of your water, rent, council tax - could easily be £54/week

on top of that receipts not required for food, drink, and anything costing less than £10.
Also mileage 45p/mile rather than actual cost.

So you have a dispensation that allows you to legally write off around 25% of your income without necessarily actually having rented a bigger house or whatever, and on top of that a lot of people will obviously be taking the piss to get their income down to whatever level means they pay little or no tax.

And then there will be things like pushchairs they actually use for their own child etc., but write down anyway (which is illegal).

So a combination of legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion that's no doubt widespread.

Their expenses are probably barely lower now than when they were working because they still need to keep their house warm, rent it, etc.

Anyone asking for full fees is being a complete arsehole, obviously. Even if it's only a 20% discount (e.g. for new businesses unable to claim government support) everyone has a responsibility to reduce expenses as far as possible and pass that saving on to the user.

The expense deductions above are HMRC stipulated rates. Not tax evasion, dodging, scamming or anything else. In sure that some claim more than they should but the point is that a childminder who is being completely above board could be in trouble due to the way the govt support works. There are some for whom these deduction rates will be favourable compared to costs, others who it wont be

Many self employed people will be in a similar position because they will have fixed costs of operating which haven't gone away. The only difference with cm is that those costs are rolled in to their household bills rather than being separate.

Yes that's right, those are the allowed rates. So childminders legally claim more expenses than they actually incur in many cases, but not THAT much more unless they are in fact scamming.

@ShootsFruitsAndLeaves - that’s very interesting, I have never done a set of Childminding accounts I must say. I see it’s based on hours worked so the poster working three days a week wouldn’t be able to claim as much as the rates you’ve stated there. I do feel however the vast majority of childminders have had an advantage in being able to claim such generous amounts regardless of actual expenditure especially for things like rent.

There will be some childminders who benefit from those rates, others who lose out. When DH starter minding we had 1 of the 4 rooms in the house as a dedicated minding space. We owned, so no rent deduction, but we'd done a huge building project (non deductible before anyone asks) to create that room. The increase in our bills was actually more than those allowances. For some it'll be less.

The 10% allowance for wear sounds generous but we found that it was actually about right when averaged over a few years. Six kids are bloody hard on a house - common areas like our hall and bathrooms took a total hammering. So year 1 it looked generous but in the years we had to repaint and recarpet...not so much.

Now that he doesn't mind the frequency of repainting and replacing floors etc has reduced hugely. And we no longer run a 7 seater car!

What does your contract say? Our contract with our childminder states that we don't have to pay her if she closes. However, we've agreed to voluntarily pay her a 25% retainer. She'll be claiming the 80% profit government scheme but there are unavoidable expenses that she needs to cover which the government scheme won't help with. And we want to ensure we have a good relationship with her when this is all over. We were actually prepared to pay more than 25% (my husband and I are still earning which I appreciate isn't the case for everyone) but she was happy with 25%.