Simon Wagner is a Dad-of-three who works as a Financial Controller at PGS Exploration. For the last year, Simon has been taking the maximum amount of £243 each month in tax deductable childcare vouchers.
"My employer sent everyone in the company an email and memo which contained some information about their selected voucher provider, Early Years Vouchers Ltd, and a weblink to their site. I was a bit sceptical at first and thought that the benefits would be minimal but I've been very surprised at how much you can actually save. I save around £100 each month, which makes a big difference.
"I would say that the breadth of services that the vouchers can cover is very good but a lot of people have the misconception that they are only for infants but this is not the case. My wife and I both work full-time and some days we have to send all our kids - aged ten, eight and five - to breakfast club or after-school club. The fact that we can use the vouchers to pay towards these is a big advantage and makes a difference to our monthly outgoings.
"In the space of the last year, I've registered my children at two different after-school clubs and both times all I had to do was call Early Years Vouchers to let them know, they then did the rest for me. The whole process is so straightforward that since signing up to the scheme and registering the clubs I've forgotten all about it because it is fully automated and doesn't require me to do anything else.
"There are a lot of schemes kicking around and a lot of them will only be relevant to a small number of people. Tax deductible childcare vouchers are available for every working parent who has a child up to the age of 16 years old. Not all companies will advertise them and in a lot of cases it will be up to the employee to look into it, but it couldn't be simpler to sign-up."
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