CM Club- Tax Return Food Costs

[sunnyshine]

Do you know what i can claim for my tax return for food? do you do it per day, per child or axtual food bought? thanks

someone please answer as I too would love to know!

thank you! will bump tomorrow if no one else is sad enough to be doing tax return at 11pm on sat night!!

All different - some do it as per food bought on receipts, some per day, some per week.

Personally I do it per week and took a tip from somebody else on a forum about if you went into a cafe and what the charges for breakfast, lunch and evening meal were.

You ideally should have been entering this information in your expenditure book and then you can just enter monthly figures and then annual iyswim.

you can enter whatever you feel is a reasonable expenditure. By coincidence i was on a course where this question came up today. The variation was from nowt, average £4-5 per day right up to £12 a day! Consensu was that it was reasonable to charge a higher rate than nurseries might allow due to less chance of bulk savings, paying retail prices for raw ingrediants and increased liklihood of using outdoor venues during trips out which bump up cost. It is making me review my costs as i had always charged lunch at same amount school dinners are £1.80, but this is too low based on that rationale - and when i thought about it, there no way i could buy a kids lunch around here for anything less than £2.50-£3.50 and those are the kiddies special full of crap, not the fresh organic things i give out

hth

oh just adding this is what you put down for tax return, not charging parents btw. I charge inclusive of all food & drink

I charge inclusive of food but put £3.50 p/day for breakfast/lunch/snacks and £5 p/day for break/lunch/snacks/tea. Apparently, the recommendation from the tax office now is to shop separately for mindees from your weekly shop (not sure how that works?) and to only submit receipts for actual purchases. What about the cost of getting to the shops, cooking the food - and if the children don't want what you've planned, what do you do??. I will continue to submit weekly allowances for mindees based on the hours they attend/meals they have while with me - if I get 'chosen' to be checked after my next tax return, bring it on!!!!

I am fairly new, but the way I have done it so far is based on actual food bought, so the amount is slightly different each week. I only have one mindee at the moment who is full time, so I take my shopping receipt, minus off toiletries etc, then divide the remaining total by 5( there are 4 in my family). So it's a rough amount, but seems about right.
My fee's include food, so the amount the parents pay doesn't change.