Childcare tax breaks for working parents.

[youarewinning]

Please someone explain this to me? There seems to be a £2000 tax break for families where there are 2 working parents.

So does this excude single working families as it excuses families with a SAHP.

I don't think we've had the small print for the new scheme through yet. The original proposals (that were due to start in Oct 2015) said both parents in two-parent families need to be working to claim and the one parent in single-parent families needs to be working to claim. The parents could be self-employed or employed (an improvement on current childcare voucher rules) but ignored student parents.

From what I understand if a family is already using childcare voucher scheme then they can continue with that instead - d

(Oops! Fat fingers posting early) don't know how long the two schemes are to be run in parallel.

Thanks. Just watching it on daybreak and they used the words 'both parents must be working' and still no mention of LP families.

The proposal is for £2000 tax break per child.

I'm wondering if is run as well as the child are tax credits people receive?

I think this is eligible for lone parents, if the parent is in work, and eligible for couples where both parents work.

Oh yes Kim clearly there are whole segments of society that aren't 'hard-working' enough.

I am really annoyed at this because it's all about two income households AGAIN. Just like child benefit, it's intrinsicly unfair to single income households where either there is a lone parent or in my case a disabled parent. The government have agreed he can't work (he's on the support ESA) so why are we penalised?

The small print hasn't been announced yet so we live in hope

The government have compiled 10 key facts on the scheme that you can find over here - hope this is helpful.

I don't understand. My DH and I get childcare vouchers worth nearly 6000£ a year. How is cutting this to 2000 a saving? Oh wait, it's not. Why don't they encourage more people to take up the existing system which seems to work perfectly well.
If it is as well run as tax credits then we are all doomed.

I'm actually quite impressed at the rethink on this one. It'll come into force too late for us to take full advantage though, as DD will be starting school next September.

But good to see they recognised that two parents claiming vouchers to help with nursery fees for a single child would lose out under the scheme.

It's a load of shite. I wish they would just put all the money into education and the healthcare service. This is what I want money spent on. This is what will impact my children, and everyone's, for the better. To be honest this will put me off voting for them as if seems they consider us thick enough to be swayed by it. I'm self employed, I work full time hours but stagger it around the kids, so often I'm working late at night and weekends to fit it all in. I won't get help because I'm not putting my children into child care, but I'm working like a dog. And if I did, I'd spend it on tutors and good healthcare, the things that this government are totally fucking up!

Dingbats - childcare vouchers may be an additional perk from your employer but most employees have to enter some type of salary sacrifice to get them. This means that most families are not getting the value of the childcare vouchers for free but only the amount that would go to tax on the vouchers. This is about £930 (per person) if you're a basic rate taxpayer.

Have yet to read the small print but the headline figures seem good. Not sure why it is being rolled out over a year, why not start it all from day one?

To get 2000 you need to be paying 10,000 in childcare cost, so 8000 cost to parents, government adds 2000. I think that is how it will work, yet to read the small print.

So if childcare cost was 5000, then parents pay 4000, government pays 1000. So would it be in the governments interest to reduce the cost of childcare?

Looks like the Small Print can be found here on Gov.uk

It's still a drop in the ocean. I work with a lot of European people and we have talked about the cost of childcare in the respective countries and in the UK it is nearly double the cost of the other countries.

This government and to be honest the other lot to say they want to get parents back to work but when you have fork out over £900 PCM for childcare you have to be earning over £20k to be bringing home enough to cover the child care never mind the optional at least it seems to the government things like mortgage/rent, bills, food etc

The 2015 means that some people in the existing scheme will be worse off if they switch to the new scheme. That's my understanding anyway.

It is all smoke and mirrors. This isn't extra money.

Doesn't help us at all. I'm a student and DH works full time, so we're not eligible. A couple earning £300k would be eligible. Guess gaining advanced skills isn't that important to society after all :(

kopparbergkate there are childcare grants available to full time students on HE courses, you might be eligible? Details on gov.uk website.

I will be sticking with childcare vouchers as long as I can as the benefits are definitely higher for us, in fact don't think we'll be eligible for new scheme (at least until I am made redundant but that's another story...)

How can the current childcare voucher scheme be better? Max voucher amount is 243 a month, that is not the tax saving. Tax saving is around 930 a year.

What am I missing? Is it that the 930 is higher than the 20% of childcare cost?

Cindy because I've been in the childcare scheme for a few years I get the maximum tax relief on the 243 which is about 80 a month/930 a year as the money comes out before it gets taxed.

As my childcare costs are 6000 a year under the new scheme I would get 1000 so i would be marginally better off. And if my childcare costs went up then I could be more better off than that.

BUT, as previously mentioned I can't. Oh well - at least they aren't shutting the voucher scheme before DD goes to school. Well, I hope not anyway...

Cindy - the tax saving can be more for someone who is paying 45% tax - £1,370. It would be nothing under the new scheme.
Even a basic rate taxpayer would get more under the childcare voucher scheme if their partner is not working as under the new scheme relief is available only if both partners are working.

Thanks for the link to grants! We earn too much for those I think...and tbh, we don't need a grant; it would just be nice for us (well, DH) to get the tax break that a couple earning gazillions more than us will get automatically.

It comes in after general election. And could be scrapped. Long-term promises by governments have a poor history.

Are stay at home mums/dads" being marginalised. Or just ignored?

The gov.uk paper is very helpful re the small print. Single working parent families can claim as much as a dual working parent family with the same number of children, which seems like an improvement to me.

The position for those on beneifts of various sorts is too complex for my little brain!

www.gov.uk/government/consultations/tax-free-childcare