Childcare vouchers definitely going...

[morningpaper]

apparently

adding £2,400 to the childcare bill for top-tax earners

Oh good, another way for the government to reward me for working hard, paying a huge amount in tax and never taking a penny in benefits, even when made redundant - is great being a useful member of society in the UK today!

But the free nursery places are useless for 3 yr olds so how will it help for 2 yr olds?
In my area the 12.5 hours a week means 2.5 hours a day, where can I find a job that does thiose hours?
If I worked all day and DD1 went into a full time nursery place I still have to pay for the 2.5 horus she is at her 'free' nursery as they have to hold a place for her for holidays and such.
So it's a big fecking con anyway.

the tories have said they will keep them

here was in the standard either yesterday or the day before

Labour aren't going to scrap them anyway. If you get them now, you'd carry on getting them. Would just not be open to new entrants (though I predict a u-turn on this tbh)

i get vouchers, dh doesn't (self employed). it isn't much money and of course am not thrilled to lose it but not a disaster.

i am far more cross (and have lost more money) about free childcare for 3 and now 2yos not extending to childminders. the poor things have all been ofstedded to death and follow curriculum so why can't they be treated as formal childcare?

how come my formally trained, experienced cm is seen as inferior to some lumpen teenager in a sweatshirt?

fishie - with all due respect, this is not a good way to describe nursery workers. The girls who work at DS's nursery are polite, well-manerred, extremely motivated and interested in DS's wellbeing. Sticking up for cm's doesn't mean you have to slag off nursery workers

Sorry if I'm being dense, but why is everyone incensed about the effect on women? Surely it's just about both parents working. If you can't afford for both parents to work, why does it have to be the man who works?

I have to admit to a bit of a bias in my feelings about who children are cared for by wrt parent vs non-parent but I still don't really understand why people are bemoaning the 'woman' aspect of it.

ok sorry fair enough. i just feel so cross that choice is removed from parents, or else they pay themselves. it is hypocritical to expect all childcare to be formalised and then to exclude some from free provision.

fair point fishie

flamingo I agree - there are plenty of women on here who are the higher earners in the family and actually the men would be the ones having to stay at home if there had to be such a choice

Why is it such a crime to offer some support to people who are working hard to support their families? I thought the vouchers were too good to be true! We both get the max of £243 per month and it has made a big difference for us. I think I will probably cut our working hours to cover some childcare as I make so little profit after I pay my nanny and her tax (and my tax too...)

Anyway, why are we encouraging poorer non-working parents to put their kids in nursery for a few hours a week? How does that help anyone. If they want to do something useful they should invest more in parenting support such as homestart. Non working parents can take their kids to free playgroups everyday anyway. That is what I did.

Anyway, since none of us mums will vote for Gordon (and wouldn't have done anyway) hopefully this is all irrelevant

Well I jumped through hoops to become an accredited childminder so I could take nursery vouchers

Now DH (who has a level 3) can take nursery vouchers (from December I think) 'just like that' so all my extra work was for nothing -

The rules for childminders providing Funded Early Years Education are changing - but I am not completely sure how & when

We don't get them anyway as both self employed - which always seemed horribly unfair - but I'm wondering if this is political suicide or a carefully calculated gamble.

Surely lots of people who fit into this 'middle income' category wouldn't be voting for Brown anyway? And those on lower incomes should be getting more tax credits to make up for it.

I agree though, why bother with a free 2.5hrs a day for 2 yrs olds. Wouldn't it be better to give more free hours to three year olds, and allow them to bundle the hours up so , say, you'd have two full days free childcare?

hang on a minute... until now you've all been completely happy to take this money despite the fact that plenty of equally hard-working parents (self-employed, say, or whose companies aren't on the scheme) didn't get them? how the hell is that fair?

polly, here's my opinion. too many people in this country are too happy to ignore other people struggling so long as they're alright, jack. and now suddenly there's a big hoo-ha because they'll feel a pinch, well welcome to the real world folks. and you should've paid £25 for a media request btw.

polly, here's my opinion. too many people in this country are too happy to ignore other people struggling so long as they're alright, jack. and now suddenly there's a big hoo-ha because they'll feel a pinch, well welcome to the real world folks. and you should've paid £25 for a media request btw.

imho gordon brown is exacerbating this "I'm all righ Jack" approach by his continual stating of "well if you're currently on the scheme you won't be affected". That is not the bloody point!

true story, monday, that does seem counter-intuitive i think. it's either fair or not fair.

Just more pressure on those currently not having their child indocorated into the system as young as possible to do so if you ask me, I had a heated discussion with my HV as to why DD wasn't taking up her "free" nursery place at 3, when I was at home all day with 2 other children at school.
Apparently it was good for her to be educated at 36 months so she should be
Can't imagine a young uneducated girl putting up much of a fight that her child would be better off playing in the garden with Mum.

Oh and now my DH is self employed we wouldn't need the vouchers, he's never paid so little tax and claimed so much back so really the self employed cannot have it both ways can they ?

Well, Aitch, I think you've got a point. I've never understood why the childcare tax vouchers had to be administered by third parties (adding extra expense into the system) and were only available to certain forms of childcare. That's a guaranteed way of making an expensive and inequitable system. And Polly you can quote me on that.

Of course, one way of tackling this would be to make all forms of childcare tax deductible, up to a certain financial limit. I admit that doesn't help those out of work, but it should lower the barriers to getting back into work, surely?

the self-employed pay tax at the same rate as everyone else, except in advance on their projected earnings, your husband needs to speak to his accountant. they're full of boasts about how they can fiddle things, but the tax people will get you in the end, and they will murder you for it. not something i would risk, personally.

i heard an economist on the radio saying that the best way to deal with benefits is to make them completely universal and then collect back in income tax. made a lot of sense, cut down on form filling and admin for both the individual and the govt, and the system is in place to remove money from wages.

With respect they do not pay the same at all.
DH has an accountant and we will be around £10k a year better off with him working less.

Strikes me the simplest solution is to alter everyones tax code so nobody pays tax on the first £10,000, then the poorest stop paying the most tax as under the current system.

I won't be sad to see childcare vouchers go. They are a very unfair benefit as

1. You can only claim them if your company belongs to a scheme

1. Self employed cannot claim them

1. They reward the highest earners on the top tax rate most.

I hope that they will be replaced with a new system that benefits all of society.

Milly, I don't understand your comment about self employed people not having it both ways. I am self employed and pay the same tax rates on my income as I would do if I were an employee.