Act now to protect your entitlement to childcare vouchers!!

[WorkingMummyyy]

The Government recently announced plans to quietly withdraw the tax relief on childcare vouchers, which means basic rate taxpayers will lose out on about £900 a year. If you think they should think twice before penalising working parents, please please please sign the official petition at petitions.number10.gov.uk/keepvouchers. Even if childcare is the last thing on your mind at the moment, if you're ever likely to use any nursery, nanny, childminder or out-of-school care then these plans affect you! In fact, you're more at risk than people who've already got a child, because their vouchers will be protected for a little while. Tell all your friends and family - there are 54,000 signatures so far and every extra one helps!!

Bumping. This tax relief is extraordinarily important - and removing it is going to mean big losses for working parents (like me).

Just to add for currently pg women, if you sign up for them before April 2011 you keep the tax and NI benefit until 2015. So if, like me, you were going to be better off not using them in the year following maternity leave, you may wish to recalculate. Not sure what happens if you change employer though, presume you lose the benefit.

The best thing to do to try and protect your entitlement is to vote for anyone but Labour in the next election! It is their policy.

I use them and they make a big difference to my Child Care bill

Perhaps Ewe, but given the only alternative likely to get in is Conservative, for whom I would never vote after the appalling job of public services they made last time, there aren't many options out there.

Apparently not, I asked my local Tory MP and he said that they have no plans to scrap them. Which kinda fits with there ethos, it benefits the rich more than the poor so imagine they will keep it.

I have already signed the petition, I just suspect they don't pay much attention to them!

Is this where you put aside an amount from your salary each month, before tax, which goes through a third party to pay for childcare?
(not heard it called childcare vouchers so am a bit confused...)

yes that's what it is - what do you call them?