Have you been on maternity leave this year, and claim tax credits?

[ObsidianBlackbirdMcNight]

If you have been on maternity leave this year and claim tax credits, you can disregard £100 per week that you are on paid mat leave from your income when you declare it to tax credits. Over the 39 weeks that is £3900, so worth knowing about!

Apparently it is written on the annual review form but I never saw it so missed out on the chance to disregard £3100 from 08-09. Knocked £800 off this year though which has been nice for the last few weeks

Spread the word! I'm going to repost this on other topics because if you try to go back to a year before this one they won't recalculate it.

Sorry, i'm probably being dim but does this mean you're entitled to more tax credits as effectively your income is lower?

Yes, i got this calculated into what i can claim. They disregard Statutory Maternity Pay. It made a big difference to the amount we get.

Would this show up in your P60 at the end of the year, so if you hadn't told them then it would be backdated?

Yes exactly, Newbeginning.

No, it doesn't show up in your P60, it's all just income, so you need to calculate it yourself and tell them yourself. They will never deduct anything themselves!

So, if you have been on mat leave for any portion of the 39 paid weeks since April 09, and you received at least £100 a week for those weeks, you deduct £100 per week from your total income figure when you call/send in your figures for 09-10. So if you had 21 weeks on SMP this year, you deduct £2100.

Oh I don't know, and my employer has royally mucked up my pay since I've been off (October).

Got paid today and they had sorted it out with lots of deductions etc.

So if I lok at my payslips I should see how much SMP I got shouldn't I?

If you were working when you got pg you should have got more than £100pw for all of the 39 weeks of mat leave that you took. So work out how many of those weeks were since april 09 and take off £100 a week for each one.

Thank-you Kat - I really appreciate your advice. I should have been on full pay for first 8 weeks, so I think I'll start counting after that

you can count the first 8 weeks if they were maternity leave and not A/L or any other kind! You can deduct £100 a week for any of the 39 weeks that you had during this tax year, no matter how much you got paid (as long as it was over £100 a week).

crikey - I'm so thick - thank-you. That makes a big difference.

Not thick! It's very complicated!

kat - thank you so much for letting us know. I rang them and said my income had gone up by just over £1000 but with this i can call them and change that

Kat - thanks for the info!
I was just now on the phone with the inland revenue asking for help with tax credits. Frankly I have NO IDEA about benefits and which ones I can claim.

They took me through a questionnaire and asked for my yearly income. I told him I am on maternity leave. And he said it does not matter it DOES count as an income.

They will send me forms to fill in. I will remember to deduct the 100 pounds!!

THanks again.

As kat said, include all the weeks you get stat maternity pay for. Don't worry if you are being paid for those weeks as wages too, as you will give your total salary earnt anyway, which may well be lower than if you were not on ML.

And deduct the full amount of SMP, as if you are borderline earners it might make a difference - SMP is £123.06.

So does that mean you should deduct £123.06 multiplied by the amount of weeks on Mat Leave? (as opposed to £100 Kat said)

yes, that is right. That is what I was told to do. The amount that is not counted for income purposes is your whole SMP. You should tell them: 'my total income last year was £xxx last year in total, of which £xxx was SMP made of yy weeks x £123.

Thank-you!

Warning: please check the facts before you act... not saying it's wrong as such, just that the directgov website doesn't seem to mention anything about £100 deduction. See here

it's not wrong - this is what I was told in 2007-8 when I was on maternity leave.

just out of interest, where did the info come from? Thank-you.

OK, I've had a chance to check now. It actually is correct but I had to go and dig into HMRC's internal guidance to find it. The relevant bit can be read here.

They don't really make it easy to find, do they?

Yes this is correct - you can deduct. However I would advise asking them to make a note on your file that this is what you have done.

First time round I asked if this was correct, they said yes, I deducted, then we must have got randomly checked as I got sent a very scary sounding letter saying I had falsified my income!

Was all sorted out in one easy call but still they have a way of wording those things....

Thank-you for clarification.

And sometimes it all depends who you have on the end of the phone.

whilst half way through my mat leave last year a lovely lady told me about this on the phone and told me not to forget when I did my final declaration in the Sept when I had officially finished work.
When I rang back a few months later the bloke I spoke to basically denied all knowledge of this and I had to work it all out using my calendar cos he wouldn't even tell me what tax week we were in so I knew how many £100 to take off my final pay slip.

After a few choice words I told him that I hoped to god that the phonecall was being recorded because if I had counted the weeks wrong then I would end up seeing them in court!

I would second the confirming with them that you have deducted money and what that money is for. I personally go with the never ever presume they know what on earth they are doing. Tell them everything and then any errors are their fault not yours.

I just read that link, and it says £100, so ignore my original correction saying you can claim the full SMP. I was told by a muppet that it was the full amount. As already said by someone, it clearly depends on who you talk to