In April 2017 HM Revenue and Customs started rolling out Tax-Free Childcare, which helps working parents with the cost of childcare with up to £2,000 of support per child per year, or £4,000 for disabled children.
Today, Tax-Free Childcare opens to parents whose youngest child is under 9, or who turns 9 today. The scheme will open to all remaining eligible families with children under 12 on 14 February 2018. This means all eligible parents will be able to apply for Tax-Free Childcare before the end of this financial year.
Parents, including the self-employed, can apply online for Tax-Free Childcare by visiting Childcare Choices. Parents can also access the government’s childcare calculator through Childcare Choices, which helps parents to choose which government childcare support is best for them.
Since opening the childcare service, through which parents apply for 30 hours free childcare and Tax-Free Childcare, more than 325,000 customers have successfully applied and are now using the service. Of these, more than 170,000 have a Tax-Free Childcare account.
What’s Tax-Free Childcare like?
The government is giving more help with the cost of childcare to working parents than ever before. It introduced Tax-Free Childcare in April 2017, and has doubled the free childcare available to working parents of 3 and 4 year olds to 30 hours a week for families in England. In 2019/20 the government will be spending around £6bn on childcare support – a record amount of support.