expenses for food

[Emmsy1]

would like to get a few ideas on how much is fair for me to claim against expenses when it comes to food for the mindees? I mind a 2 yr old & a 6mth old who I am weaning. I provide breakfast, fruit snack, lunch & cooked dinner. Any advice would be appreciated

One thing to do is to keep your receipts for everything, mark off everything you spend on mindees & claim those. The alternative is using the receipts work out how much you spend on average for each meal, per child and then claim the same amount per child per day according to which meals you have provided. That is what I do, but then the expenses package I use has space set aside in it for you to enter the amount per meal & then against each child/family enter in how many breakfasts, snacks, lunches & dinners you have provided each week. It then automatically works out the totals for you As guideline I say £1 for breakfast, 50p for snacks, £2 for lunch & £3 for dinner. But the dinners I provide are for older (school age) children who eat a lot more than a toddler & therefore cost me more!

I claim £1.50 per day per child as sometimes they have lunch and tea and sometimes not. For an after school child who only has a snack I claim 50p. I keep all receipts but don't differentiate between what is for us and what is for mindees as it's too complicated.

Having read what Badgerhead has said, I think I might be underestimating the costs though.

Inland rev said to put down £1.50 for snack meals and £3 for hot meals

So a 2yr old comes to mine from 7.30 till 4.30. They have had breakfast, toast, fruit then lunch then a snack after school so the total claim would be £6 for that day

I claim £3 per day, because when I worked it out, that was slightly less than my average, so I think I can prove it's a fair claim.

Thanks ladies, very new at this and dont want Inland rev on my back for claiming too much! (don't want to be out of pocket though either!) Its quite a lot though, wish there was a huge list somewhere were you could look up a reasonable price for a certain dish, eg, Shepherds pie £2.00 etc...