Tax experts - help on childcare vouchers please!

[tiredandgrumpy]

When I was an employee, I used to get childcare vouchers towards the cost of my dc's nursery fees. It made a significant difference.

Now I am self-employed, I cannot get them. Have spoken to HMRC (many different phonelines - no one felt able to advise) but have been told that I cannot simply put the equivalent £50-odd a week as an expense on my tax return. Is there any way of getting a benefit similar to the voucher scheme? If not, surely this is a real bias against the self-employed?

Help MUCH appreciated.

lots and lots of employers currently don't offer this scheme, so it's not solely discriiminatory against the self employed

even teachers (or my own LEA) don't offer it as a perk which I'm not very impressed with - dh has recently become self employed and it's a significant savings

hmm, not sure tiredandgrumpy.

Worth people knowing though that childcare vouchers are not an entitlement, your employer needs to choose to participate in the scheme and is not obliged to offer them.

Bearing that in mind I would be surprised if there's anything similar for self-employed people - you tend to lose out on tax-free schemes like that by leaving employment I'm afraid.

sorry not better news!

I think there is a difference between being a sole trader and a limited company. If you have formed a company for your self employment there are ways I think. But not if you are sole trader.

Thanks for the advice, even if the answer is no!

Think it's really poor that employers don't offer this as a benefit. Especially state sector, which should be towing the government line! My sister, a gp, cannot get it either. I know there is additional admin to set it up (I used to do it!), but the regular workload is no greater, so employers really have little excuse.

As to self-employed, well I'm surprised and disappointed.

I am in the process of trying to sort this out for my DP. I claim through my company as I'm employed and pay PAYE but because he is self employed he cannot claim but apparently if you have a limited company and you pay yourself a salary every month (through PAYE) then you can get them. My DP has a limited company but does not pay PAYE although he pays tax once a year (quite a lot of hasten to add!!). So we are still trying to sort it out.

Hope this makes sense.

Also what companies dont realise it is benefits them through the NI payments to actually join up to one of the schemes.

I think the downside for employees is that it affects your pension? Our employer was very keen that we should understand the ramifications before we signed up, and indeed as a result some of us didn't.

Really? I never knew that.

Hi tiredandgrumpy

Me and my dh are both self-employed and as we have two at nursery the fees are enormous...we also formed a limited company which has various tax benefits. We are both employees of the company so we both get the childcare vouchers