Maternity Leave Pay Help!

[NewMumsFirstRodeo]

Hello everyone!

I am stressing the f* out because I need to apply for my maternity leave and submit my forms to payroll. I have rang them and asked for a pay forecast as I would love to take a year off but financially may only be able to afford 9 months - however they have declined this and said it's not something they offer!

Maths is not my strong point but I have looked at the family policy and it states I am entitled to:

8 weeks full pay
18 weeks half pay
Plus SMP @ £184.03 for 13 weeks
13 weeks unpaid

Can anyone help me work out what the monthly pay would be if I spread these payments over 9 months and 12 months please? If it helps my salary is £37350 and my take home pay after tax/national insurance is £2250

Thanks in advance!

Are there other deductions OP as on that salary after tax & NI would be £2493? Pension? Student loan?

Your employer doesn’t have to offer that breakdown as not all employers allow you to average your pay over the months like that but you can of course essentially do the same yourself by budgeting.

Rough figures based on salary or £37350 (although as previous I assume pension/student loan or something comes off yours as your monthly take home is lower than just tax & NI by my calculation)

8 weeks full pay: £575.31 ish per week x 8= £4602.48
18 weeks half pay: £287.65 x 18= £5177.79
13 weeks SMP: £184.03 x 13= £2392.39

That’s all of your total pay.

All of those added together = £12,172.66

If you wanted to make that pay last 12 months you’d have to budget roughly £1014 per month.

9 months would be roughly £1352.

Yours would be less than that though I’m assuming due to pension coming off making your take home lower, but you can pause pension while on maternity if you want to get that amount back in the short term.

Sorry national insurance, tax and pension all come out! No student loans etc

If you opt out of pension then my figures above should be accurate enough, if you stay paying your pension (which I would really recommend doing) then you would need to subtract your pension amounts from those figures so it would be less.

Looking at the Mat pay policy are you in the NHS? I know they offer to average out pay over the Mat leave period. In which case you would be making 9.8% pension contributions, which makes your salary work out almost perfectly as your take home. So on that basis:

Total gross maternity pay you’re entitled to is £14603. Averaged over 9 months, your monthly gross would be £1623, and over 12 months £1217. Can’t say exactly how much that works out as in take home pay because will depend when it falls in the tax year (and because if you are NHS, the pension contributions are worked out as if you hadn’t got the pay averaged over the whole period, even if you did), but approximately £1323 monthly over 9 months or £1071 monthly over 12 months.

It'll vary depending on when you take leave as well compared to financial year. I went to SMP on 1st April. So all my full pay time before that was taxed etc like normal as part of previous financial year. But then meant I hadn't used my tax allowance so when I returned to work I got less taken off as tax.

Also remember you accrue annual leave while on maternity. So you can use your annual leave to extend the maternity by about a month on full pay.

I was going to say this too. I was on maternity leave until the last week of SMP amd then "returned" to work, except I went on annual leave for 9 weeks which obviously meant I got my full pay at that stage.

If you’re nhs they absolutely do offer it to be spread out evenly, I did it! Pay roll can do your forecast but much closer to the time you go off because it depends on your earnings in the qualifying weeks.
dont forget you can use annual leave in the unpaid element rather that not being paid!

8 weeks full pay £5744 gross
18 weeks half pay £6462 gross
13 weeks SMP £2392.39 gross is SMP liable for tax? I have assumed so in this calculation

total of £14598

if you then spread that over 12 months the tax will take into account the months during the year that you are not receiving an income

so you get £12,579 tax allowance and you will pay tax on £2019 of your income

meaning your tax for the 12 months would be £566

Leaving you with a net income of £14,031

monthly that would leave you with £1,169 net

the issue then is your wages will most probably straddle 2 tax years, so the calculation will unlikely be this even between the two years

Just thought I’d mention that for my NHS colleague (might be applicable elsewhere), they only split the enhanced maternity pay over the time period so initially when it was no SMP and just the averaged pay they were actually on less than when SMP + the averaged pay.

Hi - I’m about 6 weeks away from starting maternity leave. This is my estimated pay that HR have sent me, though it’s gross pay not take home, based on £2647 gross per month

£2391 first 6 weeks
Then each month will be as follows:
1954
2164
1659
814
788
814
814
368
0
0
I'm starting may leave midway December. I requested a year but likely will have 10 months. My manager advised to request the full year as it’s easier to go back sooner than planned than the other way round. I will use my 10 ‘keeping in touch’ days in the last couple of months to boost my pay (paid as normal wages, will be very roughly 500 take home per month if I split the 10 days over 2 months). Hope that helps?