Aibu childcare vouchers and housing benefit

[CoffeeFirstPlease]

Aibu to appeal the decision to use my childcare vouchers as income but not take into consideration the fact that I have to actually pay childcare costs?

So I will get childcare vouchers from work £220 a month from my wages I pay this to my Ofsted approved childminder. They are using this £220 as income even though I don't physically have this money yet they refuse to take into consideration my childcare costs. Just wondering if it's actually worth me fighting or if I should just cancel my childcare vouchers and pay from my wages as they are using this as actual income anyway even though I don't have the money so if I'm paying from my wage they will have to take into consideration my childcare costs if that makes sense? I claim housing benefit and tax credits. I'm in temporary accommodation so either way I will be dealing with housing benefit who are also using 50% of my pensions contributions as income so at this rate I might as well cancel that too.

I'm not sure you understand how childcare vouchers work. They are income and it's your choice to use them to pay for child care.
Would you expect them to look at all your bills and just use your net income ie after bills to assess you by. It's hard but this is how the world works.

You have choices, don't work and look after your kids yourself or use vouchers and obtain the tax advantages of some tax free childcare. If you take the vouchers as straight cash you'll pay more tax and so your take home will be lower.

It's how the world works.

If you didn't get the vouchers, and paid tax on them, would your childcare get subdised? How much would you get vs how much you would loose in tax savings?

Childcare vouchers ARE income.

I don't think OP is necessarily saying that It's not income, but that you should count the income and expenditure of the vouchers, or count neither.

I just thought if they use it as income despite the fact that I don't physically have this money then surely the fact that I pay childcare they have to take childcare costs into consideration. If I wasn't getting vouchers and paid childcare they would take this into consideration.

If I didn't have the childcare vouchers I would claim childcare through tax credits which they would still have to take into consideration so my thoughts were that the vouchers were better all round. I have now cancelled the childcare vouchers and will just claim the costs from tax credits as advised by the housing benefit advisor as they will take the costs into consideration if I don't pay with childcare vouchers.