30 hours free childcare- means tested?!

[bingbongbang23]

Sure I will get blasted, but I only just realised that the 30hr free childcare is means tested. I have paid full price for my child for past 2 years- at a whopping £1240 a month, but it is what it is.

Selfishly, i was so looking forward to her turning 3 and getting the free hours. Would be a massive help with mortgage going up. However I don't qualify. And it is not a sliding scale, I don't qualify for anything. So I would actually be better off reducing hours so I would qualify for the free hours- in what world should that be the case?! Makes no sense to me!

So how rich do you think someone should be before the government stops subsidising their childcare OP? I'd say 100k is about right, especially when you can offset your pension

They're not free hours, they're funded. Most parents will HAVE to pay some sort of contribution towards the 30 hours because the funding doesn't cover the hourly rate of childcare settings.
Be grateful you're getting anything. When my kids were born, there were no funded hours or tax credits- all I got was child benefit.

my kids full time nursery with 15 hours is £1,707.57

But by us working a day less each and getting the 30 hours - we only pay £654 a month to the nursery! and we can also use tax free childcare bringing the fee's down again - it's a big difference

During the 1980s very little child care was available and it all had to be paid for in full. No free care. My area had only one nursery in 10 mile radius. No universal credit. If you needed more money you got more hours. No minimum wage or legal right to annual leave. Please stop complaining millennials!

Do you wanna talk about house price inflation then? Or tuition fees maybe?

Load of mumsnetters not seeing beyond the end of their own noses here.

I agree OP. Let's lay out the scenario. Nuclear family, DF earns £100k, DM £20k. They consequently make the decision in light of receiving no child benefit and free hours they can't claim anywhere that the mother will give up work til the kids are older, as all her money is being spent on childcare.

She's now completely dependent on him financially. No independent income.

Say she does go back to work when youngest is in ft school, she can't get a job doing what she was previously in her field owing to fast paced nature/changes and lack of CPD, or at previous seniority. She takes a major career hit. Bugger.

Then let's say her 'D'H fucks off. She hasn't been paying into a private pension for these years, he can afford a great lawyer, and now she's on her own with the kids and no/a shit career. Completely fucked.

But yeah all these greedy bitches her? Trying to protect themselves, who do they think they are....

I think this can still be the case.

In my area, I will move my child from private nursery to state school nursery. As wrap around care is already being paid for with older child, this is not additional cost. Net, will completely remove the full time nursery fee.

Separately, when hit over 100k, you don't receive the tax free vouchers, your tax free allowance is lessened. So, by reducing hours, it can easily be that you are better off in terms of overall money. As PP mentioned, it is common for people to then plow some extra money into pension to get around this as the net adjusted incomes arrives at just under £100k (childcare vouchers back; higher personal allowance AND 30hrs funding in the state school).

This.

It isn't as simple as 'day rate must be more than nursery fees'. At £100K you tip over the cliff edge for multiple financial thresholds:

• Tax free childcare no longer available
• 30 hours free reduced to 15 hours only
• Lose your tax free personal allowance (meaning you pay tax at 60% on earnings over £100K to £125k, plus NI etc.)

Together, those cliff edges actually mean the net money you recieve in your pocket (in this case, after paying childcare fees and the tax) is tiny. The marginal rate means you're actually having about 90+% 'deducted' and so for each £1 over £100K you earn, you barely see 10p from it.

This website explains it much better https://wingatefp.com/the-loss-of-free-childcare-a-97-marginal-rate-of-tax/

When people talk of being better off working less hours - its usually relating to the fact that after £100K and loss of the childcare hours and increased tax rate, you end up working 'for free'. Might as well reduce hours and get the same amount of money in your pocket, but with the benefit of more free-time (or less childcare costs, as you can then reduce childcare reliance).

I have no real understanding of the benefits system so I have no idea how it works but from personal experience it does seem to pay well for people that have zero intentions of ever working while other are working multiple jobs to make ends meet.

But op I do agree that it is a strange set up
When you'd be 'rewarded' for working less but unfortunately I know so many who have this worked out to a tee. My neighbour is on benefits and receives pip and I swear she is rolling in it in with her lip filllers, Botox, hair extensions, never ending Uber eats and shopping trips. All I can do is get on with it. Thankfully I enjoy my job

I understand that I will get very little sympathy for my situation, however I appreciate how you are feeling OP.

My partner earns over £100k and I know we are very fortunate however I earn £30k and the sums don't work for me going back to work due to nursery costs. I wouldn't exactly say I love my job but I have worked hard all of my life to get to the position I am at work and I work in in an industry that is in desperate need of staff. I am now sacrificing my career, pension etc. due to what my partner earns. I feel like I don't matter in the eyes of the government when I could (and should!) be working hard and contributing.

What smarts for me is that we are hit by an effective 60% tax rate and now we don't have my income to support us, yet 2 people on £99k a year still get all of it. It smarts even more with the new childcare funding to be internet as we would get nothing. We pay more into the system and yet don't qualify for even the tax-free childcare which just help us enough that me working would make sense. We live in the SE where our money gets us a modest lifestyle with a two bed house and a holiday in the UK once a year. I am very grateful for the life I have but we are hardly living it large with champagne for breakfast!

Things have changed if you were to read up on UC.

So you think poor people are just being cheeky?

I pay an absolute fuck tonne of tax and I'm all for a society that supports and helps those who need it. Paying tax isn't like an investment portfolio or a Christmas savings club. You don't get something just because you paid in.

Obviously some sense of moral superiority complex and a sense of smugness going by posts on here. Maybe we should throw a medal in?

It's all part of the social contract though, isn't it?

If you have high earnings and you pay a large amount of taxes, you accept that you are subsidising people who don't contribute much, if anything, to the pot.

But you shouldn't be simultaneously the person contributing the most to the pot and the person who is excluded from accessing the societal benefits that the pot pays for.

What's next? Telling high earners they're not entitled to NHS treatment because they can afford to pay to go private?

This is how you breed resentment, and this is how you cause a brain drain.

And no, I don't think "poor people" are being cheeky.

I find it more annoying that those who don’t work/work barely any hours gets 15 free hours.. but if you work full time you don’t qualify until their 3 😅 it’s all good and we’ll giving us 30 hours, but how do I afford to work and pay childcare until then? It all seems to backwards to me.

Jealous of those on incomes less than this?
(universal credit is less than £15,400).

Health care as a universal provision is not the same as childcare and wanting help because your mortgage payments are large as you've firstly chosen to have a child and secondly chosen to purchase a home for whatever price with mortgage payments to suit. You didn't choose to be born, or to need medical attention.

But as you point out, high earners can indeed fill their entitled boots with healthcare provision which is free at the point of use. I imagine they do things like drive on the motorways and if they choose to can access state schooling. So it's rather disingenuous to claim they receive nothing.

Because the 15 hours provision before 3yo isn't for the benefit of the parents, it is for the benefit of the child based on countless studies into child development and how this is impacted negatively by different variables.

Higher earners should contribute more in tax, however we should also have a tax system that ensures the more your salary is, the more you get in your bank account each month. We don't currently have this and those creeping into the £100k pay bracket have less in their pay packets than those just under £100k due to the effective 60% tax rate. This does not incentivise hard work. Add to this the cliff edge of no help with childcare costs after £100k then it seems like a double whammy.

I don't think those over £100k should get the full 30 hours, however either 15 hours or access to the tax-free childcare scheme would significantly help until you reach the £130k where tax evens out again.

This argument about choosing a large mortgage is so dumb.

If you're earning over 100k then it's highly likely that you need to live within easy commuting distance of central London and if you have a child then you need at least two bedrooms.

For the people you are talking about to get a smaller mortgage they'd need to move to a cheaper part of the country which would probably involve getting a less well paid job which would mean paying less tax!

And it's probably not a great idea to disincentivise intelligent, hard working, high earning people from having children either.

@StrictlyComeSnoozing , why do you assume high earners are 'entitled'? Don't get me wrong, of course there are many entitled people in this world, high earners or not. Just don't understand your apparent dislike of this group just because they earn.

Most people I know that earn in this bracket work exceptionally hard and make a lot of sacrifices to enable it

@MargotBamborough just for extra fun, they could all downsize to a cheaper area to reduce the mortgage and be moaned at for taking the cheaper houses from the local people who actually need them and now can't afford to live where they want to

It's not about childcare, it's about education. These children often can't talk, have never seen another child, might not even have books or hot meals at home.

Except that isn't what I said. I responded to another poster which said people should be entitled to take something back from the state for paying higher taxes. D

I don't dislike this group. I'm in this group (incidentally, nowhere near London for whoever claimed you can only earn that sort of salary in the city). I dislike the attitude of people who just do not need government support crying that they don't get it whilst other people who do need it do.

I agree that it would be more sensible to take household income as a whole. But I'll never agree that somebody earning in excess of £100k should receive government support because they chose to buy a big house.

Well then earning 100k and living nowhere near London makes you exceptionally privileged then, doesn't it? Perhaps you should walk a mile in someone else's shoes.