Higher earners - any child assistance to claim?

Tax free childcare - for every 8 pounds, 2 pound govt contribution???

15 free hours are for babies from 9 months old and at 2 years old they get the 30 free hours as long as both parents are working

@Julia that’s not right. Parents should be making less than £100K for that.

I assume you know that you can work around it by increasing your pension contributions? My salary with my bonus is around the £100K mark and I am planning on doing that once I return from mat leave. x

@Elsa Sorry I’ve misread her post. I thought it said under £100k x

Unfortunately there isn’t much. Tax free childcare is about it. And you can claim child benefit but get taxed on it so it isn’t really worth it. Think everyone should be entitled to it. I’m currently on SMP but still have the exact same bills I had on my higher wage!

@Elsa yes I did read this but we would be putting far too much into our pension every year we would need the cash for other things and couldn’t have it tied up like that. It’s a great hack though!!!

@Swapna I’ll jump on the gov website and take a look. Thank you

No. Tax free childcare and the childcare hours are for families where no parent earns over 100k. The only thing we've found is that if you're really close to the boundary you can up your pension contributions to stay under. My husband earns just over 100k and we get tax free childcare and funded hours. I earn a little less but mostly because I work 4 days. However, I honestly don't think we should get help once he or I get another pay rise. Our salaries are high and so are our costs, but we're on great salaries and I feel the pot of money for support should go to other people.

If you or your partner earn 100k you are not entitled to tax free childcare

I’m in Scotland and we will get absolutely nothing 😵

There’s nothing but the 15hrs for 3 year olds.

@Julia this is capped at 100k

Give it a try for the Tax Free childcare but as @Caroline has said - probably won't be eligible.

I would have been in the same boat but 80% of my salary is commission. So I’ll just stop selling once I hit a certain point, I will also be dropping from 47.5 hours a week to 32 so I’m sure I’ll naturally see a reduction. Can you reduce hours to reduce pay? It sounds a lot of money but living in the south isn’t cheap and my mortgage has doubled!

@Caroline maybe its ok for you because of where you live. Here without help I would need to pay over £4,5K just for nursery for 2 kids plus you need another £3k for a very basic 3 bed flat. Definitely not sustainable even when one of us is pretty much on £100k and one a bit under given all the taxes we need to pay too. I think the bracket should increase.

@Elsa maybe! We moved out of London to get more for our money but life is still expensive. We'd definitely benefit from the bracket increasing but realistically (even as one of them) I don't think high earners should be the focus of government assistance programs. I'd welcome it but there are other priorities!

@Caroline I personally think childcare should be free or very cheap as it is in other countries. I don’t think people should have to drop their jobs to take care of their kids. My husband is on £75k and it would make more sense for him to do that than us paying these crazy fees on our own.

And I don’t think having so many people doing the same would be great for the economy either.

Thanks all - looks to be just the 15hrs for 3 year olds. Yes I agree childcare shouldn’t be capped. It should be to encourage women of all levels and sectors to return to the workplace after maternity leave. Yes I earn over £100k but in order to earn that 5 days a week I pay £4k a month for childcare LOL It shouldn’t be means tested in my opinion. You need a balance of professional women at board level not just the men.

@Elsa I agree and think free or cheap childcare for all would be great. Lots of reform needed as the wonderful staff get paid peanuts despite us paying such high fees 🫠

@Caroline I know. I told you how much we are paying and I had seen they were advertising for a room LEADER position and paying £25-£27K…

@Elsa it's horrendous!

And people call americans entitled

@Jenisha my husband earns net over £100k but I won’t after tax. Eligible for what? Many thanks

@Samantha unhelpful 🙄

@Samantha agreed with Francesca. Plus entitled for not wanting to pay an average salary per child on childcare? I would say you need to raise your standards. Unfortunately the UK is following close behind the US on such matters.

If you have a spare room, I'd look at a live in nanny. It will be your cheapest form of childcare and provide you with so much more than just childcare. I'm a nanny, if you are interested, feel free to ask me any questions

@Larissa this is something we have considered and if we lived outside of London and had an outbuilding or annexe 100% but in a terraced house in London I’m just not prepared to share my family home with anyone but my husband and kids. So I need to stop moaning about the cost of nursery 😂😂

@Francesca I live in nannied in a few terraced houses. Most nannies keep to themselves because they don't want to really be around you after work, in the nicest way! Some live in nanny roles also say live in during the week only, so ensure up paying between a live in and live out wage. Or, you could find another family who would like a nanny and do a nanny share. So nanny will live out full time and nanny usually spends one week in your house and the next week in the other families house. It's cheaper because you split the cost of the nanny (which is a bit higher than just working for 1 family)

@Samantha jealous?

What jobs are you all doing for 100k? 😩 Super envious (obvs) and also want to start working and using my law degree and earn as much as I can so I need some tips 🤣🤣

@🔮Angela🔮 I do marketing but have been very lucky as they don’t pay as much for someone at my level usually. They have been making people redundant and I am scared. 😱 I am also technically a few grand under £100K at the moment without my bonus. Definitely go back and use this hard earned law degree. 💪🏼

@🔮Angela🔮 if you were a partner in a law firm you’d earn well over £100k! In edinburgh a full time lawyer earns around 70k depending on what firm you work for… however, cost of living is also much, MUCH higher than the rest of the country if you own your own property. We also get taxed at a higher rate.

@🔮Angela🔮 my husband and I work in tech. We both have a background in UX research and he comes at it from pure computer science and I come at it with a combination of psychology and human-computer interaction. Roles hugely vary in salary in our industry though. Like if you work in UX for the government you won't be hitting the highest numbers but do it for a tech company especially one with an interesting niche and you can. Start ups pay well but aren't so secure.

Don't shoot me. Yes I know I'm fortunate. But the only solution I've found is to plough enough into my pension and donate to charity in order to come under the 100k so that I get some free hours (currently 20 months) and escape the 60% tax trap. Our outgoings are high so with costs rising, especially when my mortgage deal expires, I'm not sure how I'm going to balance the maths.