Tax free childcare

Following as would also like to know. I can't work this malarkey out lol x

yeah so put in 80% of the invoice, it should immediately top up to the right amount
then you need to click to actually pay the nursery, i think its make a payment and the next screen is pretty straight forward
then the money will leave the balance after a few hours usually x

thank you so much x

don’t they pay the 80%? And you pay the remainder?

no they pay in £2 for every £8 you put in and its up to a max of £2000 per year x

it’s tax free childcare so with the tax rate being 20%, that’s basically what gets removed from the total for you to pay. I put in 80% and as said above, the gov tops it up to the total amount and then I can pay the full invoice through the “make a payment” thing.

make sure when you transfer the money into your childcare account account that you put your reference number in because otherwise it will bounce back to your bank. I did that the first time and it took 4 days for the money to come back to me so that I could try again. I was panicking because it’s such a lot of money and it looked like it had disappeared!

Thanks for this my LG is starting nursery next Wednesday so need to pay the first invoice Monday. I was just reading also about it and it says on the website the best way to work it out is the total amount times 0.8 which gives you the amount to put into the account. Hope that helps too

😳😳😳😳 that’s shocking omg

If you can, put in extra each month (up to the max in the year) so hopefully you’ll have some extra free money to cover a bill.
It rolls over from each tax year too. So max it out this tax year and whatever money is in your account will be carried over to the next tax year and you can carry on putting extra in (if you can)

My friend did this enough to cover her first child’s nursery fees whilst on Mat leave for her second

Would also add, depending on how expensive your nursery bills are, as the top-up is capped at £500 per quarter, you may find you need to pay more in the last month of each quarter so just worth checking your account to keep on top of how much the government has already contributed for each quarter.

thats good to know! ive been rounding it up so theres a little bit extra in there each time but didnt realise it could roll over