Child Care Costs for single parents

[donogn]

Does anyone know if I should be entitled to help with child care costs if I am a full time working single Mum?

[SGKelloe32]

Of course, working tax credits/family tax credits including childcare costs are beneficial to all families.

The inland revenue can cover up to 70% of your childcare costs each month and top up your earnings with working tax credits.

Go to www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk and then follow the links to tax credits help - the form can be done online and usually only takes a couple of weeks to award you any money due.

[woofgang]

you might like to look at the department of work and pensions as well http://www.dwp.gov.uk/lifeevent/famchild/index.asp

[peanut]

i dont know where you live, but here in new york state you pretty much take it dry if you get my drift. you pay all of your taxes and work hard for a paycheck to paycheck living then when you need help the response to you is "sorry you make too much". I have a family of four and we dont have a bite of food in the house but we make too much. I'll tell you what, it's the people you need help from that are making too much. Let them go hungry for a couple days and maybe that will change thier tune. It's a bunch of crap that we pay taxes so the people who dont even try to work can pay thier bills and the people who do work get screwed.

[Dom Tuk]

In the UK our chancellor Brown has decreed that to qualify for tax credits your child minder has to be registered. The cynical minded may think that this was done as Mr Brown knew that a vast majority of minders are not registered and that he calculated the number of registered minders with the number of children with working parents and knew that he was on to a winner here...but I am not of that ilk and think that his intentions were genuine and that he is a wee scottish lad. So if you are paying a unregistered minder to look after your children and you come across the box in the tax credit form where you have to fill in the minders registration... say a blessing for our scottish bonny lad will you.

[abrakazabra]

I'm a single parent who applied for Working Families Tax Credit when it first came out. Despite completeing all the forms accurately and providing the Inland Revenue with all the information they asked for, they still stuffed up. After 18 months my payments suddenly stopped without warning and when I contacted them to query this, they said that I had been paid too much each month and now owed them �1800!!! So now they aren't paying me anything until I'm back in credit with them again (which will be when my 10 year-old has finished school, at this rate!!!) Just beware - if the amount seems too good to be true, it probably is!