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How to pay with Tax-Free Childcare
Anna Smithson avatar
Written by Anna Smithson
Updated yesterday

Tiney are set up with Tax-Free Childcare to receive payments from parents, on behalf of all tiney childminders.

Working or self-employed parents earning over £152/week and less then £100k/year can pay through Tax-Free Childcare, where the government will top up £2 for every £8 paid by parents, up to £2000 per child per year.

Parents will need to set up a childcare account to pay into, either by bank transfer or card payment.

Any payments made by parents will have a top up of 20% from the government.

Parents can then find tiney and add them as a saved childcare provider in the Tax-Free Childcare portal by searching for tiney, our Ofsted number CA000038, or our postcode E16 2DQ.

Payments can be set up as one-off payments on a specific date, or recurring payments, which can be amended before they are sent. Since most families are invoiced by calendar month, meaning that each invoice amount will be different, many families use one-off payments instead of the recurring option.

Payments may take a couple of days to reach tiney, and HMRC's processing time will be impacted by weekends and public holidays, so please keep this in mind when making payment for your invoices.

When setting up a one-off payment, make sure to check the date the payment will be sent. The portal may often suggest as default a date in a month's time - so always double-check that the payment will be sent on the date you want!

Payments made from a TFC account will automatically include a unique code for each child, made up of their first initial, 3 letters from their surname, 5 digits, and TFC: e.g. a child John Smith would have a code like 'JSMI56789TFC'. Tiney can match these payment references to the relevant child and mark invoices as paid, so there is no need to inform tiney of these codes, or to add any specific reference to your payments through TFC.

If you have received an invoice that is payable by another payment scheme, such as credit/debit card or a voucher scheme, you can make the payment through Tax-Free Childcare and we will update the invoice accordingly. A receipt will be sent once an invoice is marked as paid.

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