Claiming child tax credits can be a bit confusing because there are a number of eligibility requirements which must be met before you are entitled. However, as a general rule of thumb, if you have children under 16 living with you which you are responsible for feeding, clothing and giving pocket money to, you may be able to claim child tax credit. If you would like to know approximately how much this credit will be, you can get a close estimate with an online child tax credits calculator.
This is a simple software program which you can find online. It is easy to use as a children’s tax credit calculator will walk you through the process.
You will need to have certain information on hand before you begin working with the HMRC child credit calculator, but once you begin it is fairly easy and only takes ten or fifteen minutes to complete.
Family Tax Credits Calculator
Some questions on the family tax credits calculator will require you to type in an answer and other questions will give you options buttons to click with your mouse. Most often these are simple yes or no options.
Before you sit down at your computer, you will want to have certain information readily available. You will need to have the current year’s income as well as last year’s income for both you and your spouse if you have one. You will also need to have childcare costs worked out before you begin because there may be an extra child tax credit allocation for childcare costs. As well, some children between 16 and 19 years of age will qualify for a tax credits if they are in eligible educational programmes. You will need to know this before you begin.
Child Care Tax Credits Calculator
If you have any vouchers for childcare from your employer, you will want to have those to hand as well. You will need to know if these vouchers are in return for something called a salary sacrifice.
On the other hand, some employers make payments directly to the childcare provider so you would need to treat those payments as if they were vouchers when entering information on the child care tax credits calculator.
However, the one thing the calculator can’t tell you is whether or not your childcare provider is registered with the government, making you eligible for the extra tax credit.
The great thing about using an online calculator is that the programme is set up to follow specific guidelines.
As you go along, if you don’t qualify, the programme will tell you. For instance, if you do not work enough hours to qualify then the calculator will take you to a different screen than one which will continue on if you are eligible. Even so, using an online HMRC child tax credit calculator is a quick and easy process as long as you have the necessary information on hand. Within mere minutes you should be able to have a fairly close estimate of how much your credits will be.
