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‘I'm about to have my first baby: what am I entitled to?’
> ‘I have a partner and they are working full-time’

For the purposes of this page, we’ll take full-time as being 24 hours a week or more. If your partner works less than 24 hours a week things can get quite complicated and I recommend that you seek further advice.

Because your partner works 24 or more hours a week you are not going to be entitled to Income Support. However there are some things you are entitled to, and other things you might be entitled to.

Child Benefit


Tax Credits

icon-warning1.jpgIf you want to get your tax credit calculations exactly right, you need to take into account of the fact that yearly amounts are scaled down to daily amounts, rounded up to the nearest whole penny, and they scaled up again. To make things easier to understand I ignore this complication in this website. The difference, in my opinion, is to small to be worth worrying about: for example, for a family with two non-disabled children the difference would be £1.00 over a whole year. However if you use my approach and your answers don’t exactly match the ones in the Tax Credit Office letters, this is why.



icon-example1.jpgFatima’s husband, Khalid, works 29 hours a week. They are both 30 years old. Both of them and the baby are in good health and not disabled. Khalid normally earns £261 per week gross, which works out as £13,609 per year. He’s been in his current job for a couple of years.

As Khalid is working less than 30 hours per week, they would not be entitled to Working Tax Credit until the baby was born.

They would initially receive about £64 Child Tax Credit and £20 Working Tax Credit, based on her previous year’s income. This might well be revised upwards later as her actual income will almost certainly less than normal due to being on maternity leave.

(The calculation:
Maximum Child Tax Credit Annual entitlement: £545 (family element) + £2,780 (child element) = £3,325
Maximum Working Tax Credit annual entitlement: £1,960 (basic element) + £2,010 (couple element) = £3,970
Annual Gross Income minus £6,420 = £7,189
41% of £7,189 is about £2,948. We now need to reduce the maximum tax credits amounts by this figure.
This reduces the Working Tax Credit entitlement award to £1,022 (£3,970 minus £2,948): the Child Tax Credit isn’t reduced at all so is still £3,325
By dividing these by 365 and multiplying them by 7 we see how these figures look as weekly amounts: about £64 Child Tax Credit and about £20 Working Tax Credit)
 
Remember that this is an initial assessment, and may change if their family income changes.

icon-warning1.jpg Two things have changed from 6th April 2017:

  • Any new claims for Child Tax Credit made from this date will not include the £545 family element;
  • There will be no extra child elements for any third or further children born after this date , whether the claim started after this date or not, unless the child was born as the result of rape, or what the government calls 'non-consensual conception'. How this will work in practice remains to be seen.


Sure Start Maternity Grant
Housing Benefit

Council Tax Support

When to claim what…

icon-warning1.jpgIf you are getting close to the three month time limit and still haven’t received a Child Tax Credit award, make a claim for it anyway before the three months runs out. If this is refused don’t worry: just wait until you are awarded Child Tax Credit, and then make another claim for the grant within three months of this. This only works if you’ve made a first claim for the grant within three months of the baby being born.



icon-warning1.jpgThe Tax Credit Office will ask you for your Child Benefit Number, which you won’t have at this stage, but don’t worry about this. Just make sure you tell the Tax Credit Office when you get given a Child Benefit number. 



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