Childcare costs can be included for children until the week of 1 September after they are 15, or 16 if they are blind or on Disability Living Allowance or Personal Independence Payment.

The childcare must be registered or approved and not provided by a close relative if it is being given in your own home. Most school-based childcare is also covered. The rules on what childcare counts are slightly different in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – get advice if you are not sure, or check the leaflet WTC5 ‘Help with the costs of childcare’.

If it is a one-parent household the parent must work 16 hours or more.  If there are two adults both must work 16 hours or more, unless one partner is on certain benefits or national insurance credits for sickness or disability (for example, getting Employment and Support Allowance), in hospital, in prison, or a carer entitled to Carer’s Allowance

The maximum childcare costs taken into account are £175 a week for one child or £300 a week for more than one child.

The maximum award is 70% of what you pay or 70% of the maximum childcare costs, whichever is lower. This means the most help you can get is £122.50 a week for one child or £210 for two or more children, but you may get less than this because Tax Credits are reduced by your income.

If your childcare costs vary it may be better to give the Tax Credit Office an average figure. If you only pay childcare costs at certain times during the year, you can report these fixed dates to the Tax Credit Office.

If you pay childcare costs all year round but they vary in school holidays, you can work out an average based on a year of paying childcare costs. If you only pay childcare costs at certain fixed times of year, you can choose to report the average over these fixed periods and be paid extra Tax Credits only when you have these costs.

Alternatively, you can report what you actually pay, when you pay it, but this may mean you lose out over the school year as some changes cannot be taken into account.

If you are not sure, the safest approach is to report all changes to the Tax Credit Office and keep a note of the date and time that you notified them. There is a childcare costs calculator on gov.uk, which will calculate an average for you if you have been paying childcare costs for at least a year.

You can get 15 or 30 hours free childcare at the same time as claiming Tax Credits or childcare vouchers. Note that you should inform the Tax Credit Office if your childcare costs stop or change by an average of £10 or more a week.

It’s also a good idea to bear in mind other sources of help you might be able to use. If you are already signed up to childcare vouchers (this scheme has closed to new applicants since October 2018) you can use these at the same time as Tax Credits. Most people can save more money using the Working Tax Credit childcare element alone.

Another childcare scheme is Tax-Free Childcare, but you won’t be able to use this if you claim Tax Credits or you are in a salary sacrifice scheme for vouchers. You can find out more about all the schemes from the Childcare Choices website, and there is a tool to help you work out how much help you would get from each scheme you are eligible for here.

The two child limit does not apply to the childcare element of Working Tax Credit. This means that you can receive payments to cover the childcare costs for any number of children, but the maximum amount of help doesn’t change if you have two children in childcare or more than two.