Do you get childcare vouchers from work? Can you get a refund of unspent vouchers?

[headfairy]

I joined our work scheme in October when I returned to work after mat leave, the nanny we'd just employed was in the process of registering with ofsted and would accept them as payment. However, she decided the job wasn't for her and left. Our new nanny isn't registered and isn't that keen on doing so. In all other respects she's a great nanny, so I don't want to lose her.

However, I've been sacrificing £243 a month in to vouchers which I've never used. I've got £1215 in an account now in unspent vouchers. My HR dept are now saying you can't get any unspent vouchers refunded.

Will your employer refund any unspent vouchers or do you lose them if you don't spend them?

I want to scream and go and beat the head of HR around the head with a soggy mackeral I'm so furious they've got all that money from me. I even had a conversation with someone in HR who said if I wanted vouchers refunded I had to do it through the payroll so tax and NI could be deducted. Now they're saying that's not right and I can't have my money back.

why is it the fault of your HR department that YOUR nanny does not want to register

No, that's nothing to do with HR, I agree. What I'm really hacked off about is that HR are refusing to refund the vouchers I haven't used (ie all of them) and I'm going to lose £1200. This was never brought to my attention and I would never have joined the scheme if I'd known this was the case. It's nowhere on the FAQs that you can't have unspent vouchers back.

I would ask them for the Terms and conditions, and to show you where it says you can't have a refund. As I understand it, you can reclaim the money and pay tax & NI up to five years after the contributions are made.

We had unspent vouchers through Computershare last year and got the money back directly through them - was a bit of a nightmare from employers POV though as they then had to deduct additional tax from salary that hadn't been deducted before IYSWIM.

Have you tried contacting the scheme company or is this direct through your employer?

Chippyminton, it does say it waaaaay waaaaay down in the T&Cs, one tiny line. It's not on the FAQs though, which I would have thought was quite an important one.

Dino - the scheme is a Kiddivouchers one, so I will try them direct next, if our HR fail to deliver. I'm not going to let this go. My work have said they will only refund in exceptional circumstances, ie the death of the child. I'm going to contest that on the basis that they don't make it clear enough that unspent vouchers won't get refunded.

That is annoying. Ask them to give you a definition of exceptional circs.? And make a general enquiry to the provider, see what they say before.

Can you use the money for anything else, save it up for nursery maybe?

I did ask the question Chippy, I was told exceptional circumstances was pretty much the death of a child or parent. Great.

Ds goes to pre-school and he's funded. Possibly if dd gets to go to the same pre-school before she reaches 3 I can use them to pay for that, but that's a heck of a lot of sessions. One good thing is they don't expire until my youngest is 15 years old, so I've got 14 years to use them. I'm sure there'll be an afterschool club I can use them for, but I'm gutted as we're broke now and I really need that money back.

There will be lots of things you will need to use them for when they are at school. You can even pay for PGL holidays with them.

I know Lizcat, but it all seems such a long way off and I could really really do with that money, I'm £900 od since coming off mat leave and have no hope of paying that off unless I get the money back.

hi headfairy. I'd love to know how you got on as I am encountering the same problem. My son was at a private nursery but when my daughter was born I took on a nanny, who went through the first stages of OFSTED registration. I stopped my payments but already had £1000 in vouchers in my account. My nanny never did go through with the registration and now I am finishing work so will have no need for them. I also read in the small print that if your account is inactive for 18months they will distribute the money to charity! would love to know if you managed to get any of your back again.

In order for the scheme to qualify for tax relief, it must be a condition that you do not have the right to swap unused vouchers back: you may have heard the term 'salary sacrifice' and that is exactly what it is.

However, companies are allowed to operate discretion in unusual circumstances: it is up to them to determine what is unusual and to keep a paper trail to demonstrate they have actually gone through a decision process. This involves both the expense of actually going through and documenting that process and the potential risk to the tax status of the whole scheme if they don't operate it properly.

So ask nicely and you may get what you want, but the only thing you are entitled to get is what you already have - the vouchers.