to shout out to women who have been on maternity leave in the last year who claim tax credits?

[ObsidianBlackbirdMcNight]

If you have been on maternity leave this year and claim tax credits, you can disregard £100 per week that you are on paid mat leave from your income when you declare it to tax credits. Over the 39 weeks that is £3900, so worth knowing about!

Apparently it is written on the annual review form but I never saw it so missed out on the chance to disregard £3100 from 08-09. Knocked £800 off this year though which has been nice for the last few weeks

Spread the word! I'm going to repost this on other topics because if you try to go back to a year before this one they won't recalculate it.

bumping to make sure people get to see this

Hi-sorry to appear thick (although I'll admit I am when it comes to finance!) I thought the tax credit form just asks for your p60? Is there anywhere you can state that it has been maternity pay? Thanks for the information though, I'd have never known!

Oooh! Interesting, every little helps

crunchynutter You can always supply extra info to the TCO either by writing it on the form or calling them.

kat2907 Have you tried asking them to revise their award for 2008/9 on the grounds that they calculated it wrong? I would have thought it was arguable that they should have applied the disregard if they knew you were on maternity pay.

Unfortunately missed, the onus is entirely on you to provide all details. If you don't apply the disregard to the figure you give them, they won't go back and change anything.
As Kat says it is actually written in the annual review form. Of course most people don't read it cover to cover so don't realise.

if i've been on ML this year does that mean im eligible for TCs next year?

Funniest of all was when the tax credits wrote to me to tell me their was discrepency between what I had declared as my income and what the tax office told them - all my maternity leave was in one tax year.

When I phoned up it wasn't a problem as it is an automatically generated letter they could see it was the maternity limit but the computer system can't.......

I have asked them to consider recalculating 08-09 but heard nothing yet...they did know it was maternity leave but nobody mentioned it until about 6 weeks ago! (been back at work for 9 months now!)

When you get your p60 you call them up and tell them what your income was. If you were on paid mat leave for any portion of the year then you deduct £100 a week yourself and give them the lower total. They don't actually check unless they are doing a random check on you. Then you would have to provide evidence of being on mat leave but not otherwise.

SPB - I don't know, was your income for 09-10 much less than 08-09? If you haven't already applied for TCs then I expect you won't benefit from the mat leave deduction - but if your income for 09-10 is under the TCs threshold then you can apply for the coming year but you would have to project your actual income for 10-11 or you might get a big overpayment. If you have a combined income of £55k+ then it's probably not worth applying. But remember for next time you have a baby - if you do - to apply as soon as you go on mat leave because chances are your income will drop significantly.