Childcare vouchers credit 'reversal' or 'refunding' help - anyone?.

[sugarbum]

DC2's school has £1800 worth of our 'childcare vouchers' in the form of credit.

This is because DH's company were transferring the max amount into our account with the school until early this year (£243 a month) His company f8cked up many times as they were supposed to stop the payments back in mid 2019 but it kept going in. And let me not start on how I told DH to stop the payments back in July 2018 when DC1 left primary. That's another story.

I am trying to get DH to sort this out with his HR but they are f*cking useless.

However, that amount would have been about exactly right, to cover DC2 for wraparound care, and also holiday clubs at the school, between March 2020 until he leaves the school July 2021.

Only now, obviously things havent gone to plan, because in March, they stopped going to school, so there hasn't been any wraparound care.

There will be no summer holiday clubs. And the school has announced that they will not be providing wraparound care come September, until they 'unbubble'. Which is fair enough on the schools part.

I have emailed finance at the school, but they say their hands are tied, and they cannot refund us the money,. I understand why as it was tax free and meant for childcare. However I am wondering if there is solution?

I'm prepared for us to lose it, but I need to know first if there's a chance we could get it back, either by getting it reimbursed to DH's company and they can go from there, or in the form of actual vouchers for childcare elsewhere (Its called childcare vouchers, but for us its always been credit on our school account)

Does anyone know anything about this at all?

So you aren't actually talking about childcare vouchers? You need to find out what system you are actually using and what the terms and conditions are.

Have you contacted the voucher scheme company your dh's employer uses? Edenred or whatever , there's a few different ones

Do you mean your childcare vouchers go straight to the school rather than into a childcare voucher scheme account?

I'm surprised it is down to HR. DH and I both have access to an online portal (separate employers, separate childcare voucher companies) where you arrange to adjust the amount / leave the scheme yourself.

They don't expire, I assume you don't need them for dc2 after next year? Could you come to some sort of arrangement with friends who use childcare so you don't lose the lot?

The school is under no obligation to refund the money back to the employer, though they could if they chose to. It would then be subject to tax and NI as normal.

I expect they say they can't because it is less hassle and more profitable for them not to, but it would be nice if they would actually acknowledge that.

Rather than seeing it as a loss, you could regard it as whatever credit is left on your account when your DC2 leaves next summer will be a generous gift from you/DH to the school, for which they should be very grateful.

The simplest thing to do is just keep the vouchers in the account until you can spend them - they don’t expire until children are age 16. PGL and Stagecoach will also accept them, or an Ofsted registered nanny.

They are likely to be sitting in the school’s account with the voucher provider - I suspect that the school won’t be able to arrange a refund.

Yes the school is right they can not just refund you in cash etc as no tax and ni has been paid on it. They are only able to refund back to the voucher company you used. So it will then sit in your account until you need it again. Some voucher companies do not even accept these refunds if you have ever paid the school the same amount of money at any time in cash then they would be able to refund you in cash.