Childcare Vouchers - Salary Sacrifice or Salary plus - confused

[StarsforAngels]

Hi

My Husband (civil service worker) is being offered the option to have salary sacrifice and salary plus vouchers. I am not sure which will benefit us most of all?

We are only using a nursery at the moment for about £90 a month worth of childcare.

The salary plus ones look the best as according to them we would get £200 on top of his salary (no strings) - what is the catch?!

I only thought you could get salary sacrifice vouchers so this salary plus thing has really thrown me.

Can someone tell me which scheme is best?

confused.com!

Hi StarsforAngels

They both work in exactly the same way. The total of the childcare voucher will be deducted from your wages before tax and national insurance is taken off (basically he will save paying tax and national insurance on the amount).

You don't have to spend all of your childcare vouchers in the month they are deducted from your wages but you can only spend them with your registered nursery (you won't have a refund each month from your £243 if you only spend £90).

Before you sign up for the vouchers, check that you would not be better off if you apply for the childcare element of working tax credit:
www.gov.uk/childcare-vouchers-better-off-calculator

Hope that helps! :o)

Claire are you sure you are correct re not being able to carry vouchers over. We use computershare vouchers, the maximum amount is 243 per month each as salary sacrifice and can use them as and when we want, to whatever childcare providers we want.

CCVs can be saved. After all, you've bought them with your money!

You have an account with your voucher provider, which your vouchers are paid into and then you use them however you want.

For example, dh and I each get the full amount of vouchers. They go into our accounts and we pay them direct to the nursery online. Some months, nursery costs less than the amount of vouchers in our accounts (eg of there is a bank holiday or a short month). The remainder of the CCVs then sit in our account and we use them in a month which costs more. I also started getting the vouchers before dd started nursery, so that I had some saved for when she started.

There's probably a limit on how long you can save them for, but banking vouchers is definitely allowed.

Sorry Starsfor Angels.

Yes that is what I meant. I thought you meant you thought your husband would have an extra £200 cash free each month to spend anywhere (how nice would that be!?).

The vouchers have to be used with a registered provider but you can transfer them between settings/registerered Childminders etc if you swap.

I think most voucher providers do add expiry dates, so it would be worth keeping an eye on your account. :0)