Children: Day Care

(asked on 14th July 2016) - View Source

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he has made an assessment of the merits of enabling self-employed parents to open tax-free childcare accounts before those accounts are rolled out to other families.


Answered by
 Portrait
Jane Ellison
This question was answered on 19th July 2016

Once Tax-Free Childcare is fully open, we estimate that around 2 million families will be eligible and that up to 1 million families may take up the scheme in ‘steady state’, including self-employed parents.

Tax-Free Childcare will be launched from early 2017. To roll out the scheme in a safe and managed way, we will be gradually opening up the scheme to all eligible parents by the end of 2017.

Parents of the youngest children, including self-employed parents, will be able to enter the scheme first - as childcare costs for this group are often the highest. Families with multiple children will be able to join the scheme when their youngest child becomes eligible, and at that point they will be able to receive support for all their qualifying children.

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