Child care rebate

Does anyone know how this works?

Is it for everyone? ie not dependant on your salary?

TIA

what if you get a subsidy? do you still get the rebate?

The incredibly uninformative IRD site says ..


Tax credits (formerly rebates) for working parents

You may apply for a tax credit if you earn a taxable income and:

have donated money to a charitable organisation, and/or
have paid school fees, and/or
have paid for childcare.
Fill in a Tax credit claim form (IR526) at the end of the tax year. We will send you a form automatically if you claimed a tax credit in the previous year.

After you send the form to us, we calculate how much you are entitled to receive as a tax credit for the year.

Yes if you get the subsidy you can get the tax credit, as we have always gotten the subsidy and they tax credit.

But it aslso depends on how much you pay in daycare. The form does tell you that thou.

oh and do they backpay seen as we have been paying for daycare for a few years and never claimed???

And is it the end of the financial year that you claim? So now???

If so I won't qualify by the sounds anyway, have only paid about $300 all up so far this year.

I think it's the IR526 - same one as applying for rebates cos of charity giving.

Also, doesn't matter how many kids you have in childcare you only get the rebate once. So we had two kids in creche and still only got the $330.00. Still, its there so we always claim it. Also, only one of you can claim it

So even if you get the subsidy you can still ge tthe rebabte - are you sure?

You only get the rebate on the part of the fees YOU have paid, not on the subsidised part.

You get 1/3 of your fees paid back up to a max of $330 for the financial year

You can only apply as of April 1st for the financial year just ended, but can apply at any time for previous years, all you need is a reciept from the preschool/daycare stating the amount paid by you

You OR your partner can claim the full amount, or you can claim a portion each, but the total per FAMILY is a max of $330, regardless of income.

And for those whose kids are at school, but attending after school programmes if you are at work, you can also claim on those after school fees as well. schol fees themselves are classed as donations if it is for a public school, and you can claim 1/3 of them back as well, seperate from the childcare rebate.

To get the form, either download one from the IRD website, print it out and send it in, or ring them and ask for a childcare rebate form. Once you have claimed for one year, they will automatically send out forms for the following years. They are usually pretty quick to process it if everything is up to scratch, every year they set up a temporary team especially to process rebates as there are thousands coming in for the first month or so from April 1st onwards.

Cant remember what else was asked... and I hear dinner coming lol (yeah I know, its late, but pregnancy can be blamed for many things apparently, including late night runs to the local fast food joints )