childcare vouchers

[EmilyD]

Don't know if anyone can advise me on this, i can buy childcare vouchers to go towards my nursery fees. Does this affect my tax credits - do i need to tell them about paying part of my childcare fees with vouchers. Does it affect anything or is it win win win????

Any advise would be gratefully received.

I'm not sure but in our case it seems like they will save us a lot of money in nursery fees. I will be paying attention to this thread just in case.

That's a very good question - will have to see if there is anything on the form about it>? I just filled in something on-line (you have to be registered) and was asked how much i paid in childcare but it didnt ask anything about vouchers. All they mean is that you are not paying NI/Tax on that part of your income so dont think it should be affected - although i have no idea. There must be a helpline number you can ring?

I asked the tax creadit helpline and the person there had no idea what I was talking about!! Would really like to know whether these vouchers would help us or not before I take it to my boss!

Thanks

Anything you get as childcare vouchers doesn't count as income for tax credit purposes, but neither does the amount of vouchers you spend count as expenditure on childcare. The net effect is that if you are getting more than the £545/year basic CTC (i.e. getting something towards childcare costs) then getting childcare vouchers probably isn't of any benefit to you.

We discussed this quite recently - see here for example figures.