Childcare

[shiny_arse]

I've spoken to a few people about this at some stage or another over the last 2 years and would to promulgate here to see if I can hear back from some of the more experienced members of e-goat (you know who you are!)

At present my monthly childcare costs drop just shy of 900 quid a month due to before/after school for my eldest and full-time creche/nursery for my little one. After the uninitiated take a deep breath and whistle, my better half is in full time employment and we can just afford the extortinate costs involved.

My main gripe is that the wife gets childcare vouchers via her company. The money is deducted direct from her wages and she is not taxed on these earnings and she then receives vouchers that are accepted at the nursery. Is there any reason why the MOD or RAF cannot do the same. I would not mind forking out 250 quid a month that cannot be taxed which can offset my costs? Advice please.

Additionally I am in a green suit role and getting popped off about once a month to live a field. All very good, but these little jaunts don't attract LSSA and at the same time my childcare costs increase due to the fact that the wife can't pick the kids up till later than I can because she has to travel 30 miles from work. Is there anything in the system that can help with these additional costs??

 

[gemarriott]

I've spoken to a few people about this at some stage or another over the last 2 years and would to promulgate here to see if I can hear back from some of the more experienced members of e-goat (you know who you are!)

At present my monthly childcare costs drop just shy of 900 quid a month due to before/after school for my eldest and full-time creche/nursery for my little one. After the uninitiated take a deep breath and whistle, my better half is in full time employment and we can just afford the extortinate costs involved.

My main gripe is that the wife gets childcare vouchers via her company. The money is deducted direct from her wages and she is not taxed on these earnings and she then receives vouchers that are accepted at the nursery. Is there any reason why the MOD or RAF cannot do the same. I would not mind forking out 250 quid a month that cannot be taxed which can offset my costs? Advice please.

Additionally I am in a green suit role and getting popped off about once a month to live a field. All very good, but these little jaunts don't attract LSSA and at the same time my childcare costs increase due to the fact that the wife can't pick the kids up till later than I can because she has to travel 30 miles from work. Is there anything in the system that can help with these additional costs??

Shiney,

My son and D-in-Law are in a similar position. Twins aged 2 with full time child minders. My D-in-Law is a teacher and my son a Probation Officer. Neither of them got the vouchers initially because thier employers were just not registered with the system. A simple request via HR in both cases resulted in the school and Barnsley Probation service registering and now both qualify. I am not sure how you would go about getting the RAF to register but I suggest you take up the issue with HR as now seems to be the case, in my day Gen Office. It costs the employer nothing so there is no reason not to do it. Don't forget to keep on the Child Tax Credit case also, rules change regularly so keep reading up on allowances

Hope that helps a little.

GEM

 

[vim_fuego]

I've spoken to a few people about this at some stage or another over the last 2 years and would to promulgate here to see if I can hear back from some of the more experienced members of e-goat (you know who you are!)

At present my monthly childcare costs drop just shy of 900 quid a month due to before/after school for my eldest and full-time creche/nursery for my little one. After the uninitiated take a deep breath and whistle, my better half is in full time employment and we can just afford the extortinate costs involved.

My main gripe is that the wife gets childcare vouchers via her company. The money is deducted direct from her wages and she is not taxed on these earnings and she then receives vouchers that are accepted at the nursery. Is there any reason why the MOD or RAF cannot do the same. I would not mind forking out 250 quid a month that cannot be taxed which can offset my costs? Advice please.

Additionally I am in a green suit role and getting popped off about once a month to live a field. All very good, but these little jaunts don't attract LSSA and at the same time my childcare costs increase due to the fact that the wife can't pick the kids up till later than I can because she has to travel 30 miles from work. Is there anything in the system that can help with these additional costs??

Total empathy with you here mate...childcare is the bane of many of us...I was £700 a month in South Wales, where supposedly people are 'wage dis-advantaged'...We actually moved back into the smoke to save money by taking advantage of a state run nursery which is buck shee and brilliant...ok, the wee man is fluent in swaheli but thats a small setback in the big picture of things!!

Why does'nt the air force issue vouchers?? Probaly because we are desparately behind in all the PC/modernisation projects that indusrty dive into...We are catching up e.g. homosexuality, female pilots, paternity leave etc..

It probably will come...but wether it's in our time.......

 

[gemarriott]

Total empathy with you here mate...childcare is the bane of many of us...I was £700 a month in South Wales, where supposedly people are 'wage dis-advantaged'...We actually moved back into the smoke to save money by taking advantage of a state run nursery which is buck shee and brilliant...ok, the wee man is fluent in swaheli but thats a small setback in the big picture of things!!

Why does'nt the air force issue vouchers?? Probaly because we are desparately behind in all the PC/modernisation projects that indusrty dive into...We are catching up e.g. homosexuality, female pilots, paternity leave etc..

It probably will come...but wether it's in our time.......

Like a lot of things it seems one rule for the civvy and another for the serviceman.

If anyone else is having this problem or more importantly are getting vouchers let me know. Meanwhile I'll fire a couple of letters off to a tame MP or two and see what comes back.

 

[3wheeledtechie]

Right, I have already asked Harry Staish this one, because my local childcare facility is all teed up and registered to accept these childcare vouchers. Whilst 95%+ of their customers have one or more parents in the RAF, it is only the civvies who work for companies that have registered for these vouchers, that are using them presently.

The problem stems from JPA not being able to handle issuing them, the effect on pension being too difficult to calculate, and the Army not yet being on JPA. Harry pushed it up the Chain and couldn't get a decent response either.

Background is you can get £55 a week or £243 a month of your pay in the form of these vouchers, which are not subject to tax or NICs (ie you save paying it on that bit of your income). Clearly this is an annual maximum of £2860 you could save tax on, or £5720, if you're both serving, and equally clearly you'd need to be spending this amount of money on childcare. Obviously saving is even greater if you're rich enough to pay higher tax rate.

Either way we're being shat on because of MoD inefficiency.

 

[vim_fuego]

I have since heard that they are planned to be available form 1st April...The essence of them being that because of the tax relief if you get £100 of vouchers they'll be worth £140 at the creche/nursery...

 

[firestorm]

Childcare vouchers? LUXURY! I shell out £500 a month for my little fella and my employers pay lip service to being "family friendly". After applying for childcare payments (a multitude of forms in a process that lasted 5 months), I was able to claim the gand total of...... £2.88p a day....before tax and pension deductions.
Dream on about the public sector being PC and wealthy.

 

[vim_fuego]

£2.88p a day....before tax and pension deductions.

£2.88 a day? You were lucky...All I got was andful of warm gravel afore I started my 27 hour shift down't pit etc etc etc...

 

[firestorm]

£2.88 a day? You were lucky...All I got was andful of warm gravel afore I started my 27 hour shift down't pit etc etc etc...

.....and then our father got us out of bed before we went to sleep only to put us though the meat mincer, feet first, so he could watch our faces. . . . DT_Xtremez_15: