Childcare Vouchers – Not just for Nursery!
Childcare vouchers can play a very effective, tax efficient role in budgeting for school fees and other activities. See the links below for the ‘science bit’ but basically for every £100 of fees you’re charged, you may only pay as little as £50.
Each parent can ‘sacrifice’ up to £243 of salary per month to buy Childcare vouchers/credits. Tax is not payable on income sacrificed in this way, hence the savings available. These aren’t generally paper vouchers, they are credits into a personal account which effectively works in the same way as internet banking or Paypal. Check with your voucher scheme provider but generally the credits have no ‘use by’ date. So you can build up a healthy sum for future use.
At St. David’s College they can be used as payment for school tuition fees up to and including the term in which your child reaches the age of 5. So for those of you with a child starting at St. David’s next September start ‘saving’ now!
Irrespective of the child’s age, they can also be used for before and after school care. ( I.e. Early and Late Rooms as opposed to chess or dance etc. ). Similarly they can be used for St. David’s holiday play schemes. Outside school they can also be used for holiday schemes, child-minders, nannies, au pairs etc. The credits are not specific to a child or childcare provider so can be used for a variety of needs across your family.
St. David’s College is currently registered with Edenred (was Accor) and Computershare (was Busy Bees) but will do its best to accommodate any other accredited schemes.
A WORD OF WARNING:
THOSE REGISTERING FOR THE SCHEME AFTER 6th APRIL 2011 WILL ONLY GET BENEFIT AT THE BASIC RATE OF TAX SO HIGHER RATE TAX PAYERS – JOIN NOW!!
Links
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/childcare-vouchers
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/employers/employersupportedchildcare.pdf
http://www.childcarevouchers.co.uk/Pages/Default.aspx
http://www.computersharevoucherservices.com/Pages/default.asp
