Childcare vouchers / tax free childcare when only one of you can get vouchers?

[shojam13]

Hey,

I've struggled to find much information about this in all the Tax Free Childcare FAQs so I want to check this...

My husband has just lost his job (for the third time! ) and so will now not be able to apply for childcare vouchers in his next job as he will miss the October deadline.

Am I right that I will now have to leave my childcare voucher scheme so we can both do tax free childcare going forwards? (When he gets a new job)

I'm a bit devastated about this as I already did the calculator and know that childcare vouchers save us more money so I am gutted. Not only are we in a financial mess because he keeps losing his job, now it seems we will lose money on childcare too.

Am I right?

And is tax free childcare easy to use?

No you don’t need to leave, you can have one on each.

As an aside, why does he keep losing his job?

You can not have one of you getting childcare vouchers and one of you getting Tax-Free Childcare.
There is an overlap period (max 90 days) to take in account the vouchers ending, enabling you to use up any vouchers you have whilst also getting Tax-Free Childcare. After that 90 day period from TFC application you have to no longer use vouchers.

Can you look at what saves most out of:
You getting childcare vouchers.
You and him getting Tax-Free Childcare.

If you had both been able to get vouchers than you may have had savings of up to nearly £2000 a year. With Tax-Free Childcare you could have saving of up to £2000 a year, per child, depending on how much childcare costs.

Can you save some childcare cost whilst he is looking for work? Is him staying at home an option - no childcare cost then. If your childcare cost was zero, would your salary be sufficient to support your family?

I’ve got a set of parents paying me from both? sounds like they’ll get in trouble then!

If he is in and out of work so be careful with taxfree as you both need to earn the minimum over each quarter. You won't qualify if only one of you is working (except in cases of maternity etc there are exceptions)
I think the voucher scheme is either closing or has closed so if you leave it you might not be able to restart.
We use tax free as we are much better off under it and it's really easy to manage online.

Georgie when we moved schemes we were allowed to use up the vouchers we had left but had to write to HMRC proving DH had left the voucher scheme within 3 months.

Thanks for the advice everyone.

@Georgie without going too much into it, he's struggled with some mental health issues over the past year, this combined with bad management and some plain bad luck in the last couple of jobs means he hasn't passed his probation a few times.

@nannynick thank you - do you (or anyone) know if there is an easy online calculator where I can work out which would leave us better off?

@TangelasVine that's a really good point that I hadn't considered (about both of us having to work), thank you. As he has been a bit unstable this past year that is really worth considering - perhaps I will keep my vouchers until we feel a bit more stable.

I have considered whether we change it up and he stays at home. At the moment I work part time (3 days a week) and my salary doesn't cover all our bills, I would have to go to full time - but even then I'm not sure it would be enough. But it's worth doing the calculations right? I'll look into it this week.

Thank you all so much!

And if anyone else has any other advice feel free to comment :) i need as much help as I can get!

GovUK has a calculator but I don't know how useful it will be in your situation. Give it a go: www.gov.uk/childcare-calculator

For now I would stick with vouchers and look at if increasing your days would help. Then when he is able to work then look at things again.

How old are your dc shojam - my calculations showed tax free was best for preschool years but not for school age. If you are nearly at school age (eg 3 or 4) I’d stay with the vouchers.

Thanks @nannynick

@cherminotte - my daughter is 2 and born in April so is a way off school (and funding) yet :( still in the zone of paying full whack for childcare so it's a big chunk of our budget.

DS is getting to be less dependent on childcare in the holidays. I’ve build up quite a stock of vouchers through the scheme and now might struggle to spend them. Looking at press stories it’s quite hard to get your money back especially if you’ve changed jobs as I have.

Any creative ideas on how to usefully spend what I’ve got would be gratefully received!!!

I use them for holiday club.
Also accepted by PGL holidays and
Stagecoach

You could also try paying an Ofsted registered nanny for babysitting?