{"id":153648,"date":"2025-09-22T19:05:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T19:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/153648\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T19:05:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T19:05:11","slug":"money-blog-airport-scraps-liquids-rule-free-2000-many-parents-dont-claim-big-rise-in-inheritance-tax-payments-money-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/153648\/","title":{"rendered":"Money blog: Airport scraps liquids rule; free \u00a32,000 many parents don’t claim; big rise in inheritance tax payments | Money News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many parents don’t realise they can get up to \u00a32,000 a year for each child to help with the cost of childcare – totally separate from the government’s 30-hour scheme that was expanded this month.<\/p>\n

Register for Tax-Free Childcare and you’ll get an account you can use to pay for care for children aged up to 11.<\/p>\n

For every \u00a38 working parents pay into the gov.uk childcare account, the government automatically tops it up by \u00a32, up to \u00a32,000.<\/p>\n

Some 1.3 million families are eligible, but around 800,000 aren’t taking advantage of this benefit.<\/p>\n

“There’s still a huge awareness gap,” says Chloe Phillips, financial planner at The Money Makeover.<\/p>\n

“I’m always surprised by how many parents I speak to think the scheme ends once nursery is over.”<\/p>\n

To take part, you simply transfer 80% of the required amount into your Gov.uk childcare account<\/a>, where it is automatically topped up with the remaining 20%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This account is then used to pay for your childcare. Lots of childcare venues link up their own apps to the account to automate monthly payments.<\/p>\n

Some 75,000 childcare settings accept Tax-Free Childcare as payment, including nurseries, childminders, and clubs.<\/p>\n

Am I eligible?<\/p>\n

Children stop being eligible on 1 September after their 11th birthday, unless they have a disability, in which case their parents receive up to \u00a34,000 a year until 1 September after their 16th birthday.<\/p>\n

Parent\/s must earn at least the minimum wage for 16 hours a week on average.<\/p>\n

Those receiving universal credit or childcare vouchers\u202f\u202fare not eligible, and neither are households in which a parent earns more than \u00a3100,000.<\/p>\n

That’s not your total household income – if each parent earns \u00a399,000, they’re still eligible.<\/p>\n

“I see far too many parents miss out on tax-free childcare, not because they’re ineligible, but because they don’t realise how ‘adjusted net income’\u00a0works,” says Philly Ponniah, chartered wealth manager at Philly Financial.<\/p>\n

Adjusted net income refers to an earner’s total taxable income before their personal allowance is deducted.<\/p>\n

This figure includes things like money, shares and dividends, but does not include pension contributions.<\/p>\n

More factors affecting your adjusted net income can be found on the government website.<\/a><\/p>\n

What if you’re on maternity\/paternity\/shared parental leave?<\/p>\n

If you’re on maternity or statutory family leave you can claim for older children – but not the child you’re off work to care for.<\/p>\n

Eligibility for the latter is limited to the last 31 days of leave.<\/p>\n

What if you decide not to use the money for childcare?<\/p>\n

If you withdraw funds, the government will take back its \u00a32 top up for every \u00a38 withdrawn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many parents don’t realise they can get up to \u00a32,000 a year for each child to help with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-153648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}