[Solved] Financial benefits and paternity pay for new Dads

Hi there and welcome to the site

Money - yes i do remember having some of that!!!

Not sure about the law in Northern Ireland but if you contact your local Job Centre Plus (on go online) they should be able to help with Paternity pay - it isn't much and you get two weeks unless you go for the additional paternity instead of your partner.

You should get Child benefit but you wont get much in the way of benefits due to your joint income

We should be able to provide some great money saving ideas and it is worth looking for coupons and vouchers etc

Anyway best of luck - bet you're both getting excited and nervous now!

Assuming that the benefits are the same in NI, take a look into Childcare Vouchers - they can effectively cut a third off approved child care, though it needs to be balanced against possible loss of child tax credits.

Hi aelwood,

Welcome to DAD.info - very glad you like the site. Congrats on your impending arrival. I would talk to your local job centre or your local CAB - you can find your local one on the CAB website. They should be able to help you make sure you're claiming everything you're entitled to. The last thing you need at the moment is money worries.

Really looking forward to chatting with you.

Gooner

Thanks guys! Very glad to be here, I'll be watching all over these next few years as the little one grows.

I took some of your advice and started calling local bodies and my accountant to enquire about financial benefits etc and have come up with the following;

There are 3 types of benefit that I can see available to working people with children WORKING TAX CREDITS, CHILD TAX CREDITS & CHILD BENEFIT

Working tax credits are avilable to anyone working at least 16 hours with children and at least 30 hours a week without children. You must earn less than a certain amount, I cant seem to find it here but the idea is to raise the household income of low earners so dont expect to get it if you earn a reasonable wage. http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/taxcredits/start/claiming/income-hours/work-out-hours.htm

Child tax credits are available to anyone with children who earn less than a threshold amount, this can be calculated here http://taxcredits.hmrc.gov.uk/Qualify/DIQHousehold.aspx It's important to note that this is based on JOINT INCOME so it's easy to run into the boundary for this. This table illustrates it quite well http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/taxcredits/people-advise-others/entitlement-tables/work-and-child/work-no-childcosts.htm

Child benefits are available to everyone, with a catch if you earn under £50k/yr you will not be taxed on the benefit, if you earn between £50k-£60k you will be taxed a portion of the benefit at the end of the year making it somewhat pointless as you approach £60k, after £60k you will be taxed exactly the amount of the benefit making it useless from this perspective. There is a BIG BUT here though! I haven't read too much about this but claiming child benefit has postive effects on your state pension and may beworth applying for even if you earn too much to maintain your pension later, you'll have to do more reading on this but don't just write it off because you earn more than £60k. It's also very important to note that this is NOT based on combined income so if you and your wife each earn £49k/yr you would still get the lot.

On a side note, as I mentioned earlier, I'm self employed. There is currently no paternity pay scheme for self-employed people :boohoo:

The childcare vouchers are worth a look at - your wife's employer may have or join the scheme - there's a slight national insurance advantage to them in providing the vouchers. If you are earning over 50k yourself, check with your accountant whether you can reduce your pay and pay your wife for some of the admin work - that way you could bring yourself back under the 50k limit for child benefit at least.

If you are earning over 50k yourself, check with your accountant whether you can reduce your pay and pay your wife for some of the admin work - that way you could bring yourself back under the 50k limit for child benefit at least.

That's a fantastic idea. As it happens I earn just below the threshold but I must keep that in mind when next speaking with my accountant because he didn't think of that!

Its pretty disgusting that us being self employed can barely get anything. We work, we pay our taxes the same as an employed man. So seems a shame that after paying our tax we dont get even a government statutory paternity pay, 1 or 2 weeks. For such a special time.

Its pretty disgusting that us being self employed can barely get anything. We work, we pay our taxes the same as an employed man. So seems a shame that after paying our tax we don't get even a government statutory paternity pay, 1 or 2 weeks. For such a special time.

I couldn't agree more, I brought the subject up with my accountant when I was in with him. He pointed out ALL the taxes I had paid to the government over the past year, including road tax from the company van, VAT collected on behalf of the government that may have gone outside the UK had my small business not been there etc etc and after all that tax self-employed people don't get a penny towards bettering the state with my awesome genes! lol