How to declare amount spent on childcare in child tax credits application

[wheresmypaddle]

Hi, Have just got of the phone with the Child Tax Credits Helpline as I am confused as to how to calculate my childcare costs. As a general rule DS goes to nursery for one day a week and playgroup one morning a week. This bit I can do- add weekly costs and divide by 52 (minus costs of playgroup which is not on in hols).

But I do use nursery on an ad-hoc basis also. My mum has DS once a week but sometimes if she can't do it he goes to nursery. Also if I have to work an extra day or half day he goes to nursery. These extra days are impossible to predict in advance.

The person I spoke to said 'just guess then' - thats obviously not a good idea. I don't want to overclaim and get into trouble or end up with an unexpected amount to return. Equally I don't want to underclaim.

Can anyone tell me what they do / would do?

Thanks......

Guess for now but keep a record and adjust later so it matches an average of what you actually use?

There's no way around it other than estimating for now, unless you have bank statements or receipts for what you've paid to the nursery.

Underestimating would be better than overestimating so you don't claim too much. If you have overestimated, then ring up to change it, you'll have been overpaid so they're likely to adjust your entitlement for the rest of the year to recover the overpayment. If it's such a big overpayment that they can't recover it within the current year claim, they'll take it out of future claims. Either way, your payments would go down.

If you underestimate, then call them to change it, they'll adjust your entitlement and your payments will go up slightly for the rest of the year to pay you the extra bit you're owed.

If you do have receipts or bank statements, it would be worth going through the past year to work out what you used, taking into account the extra days.

Hope this helps. x

WTC5 (PDF) contains some examples of how to work out weekly average childcare costs.

As FairyCake says you may need to estimate your likely future costs. The more information you have, such as past invoices from nursery the better as you can then establish how often the ad-hoc usage occurs.

I use Nursery for ad-hoc afternoons here and there to cover meetings/studying outwith my normal working hours. I struggled with this too so it took me quite some time to work this out. In the end, consulting my diary to see a pattern and forcing myself to plan ahead, I figured out that the boys do on average, 2 extra half sessions a month and that's the figure I gave CTC guys. I agree with the underestimating as well. I will do that this year just in case as I had a few panicky moments when I thought the final figure wasn't going to "balance".