Please tell me I've got this right! Scenario at present:

Lone parent working 18.5 hours a week, getting full CTC and plenty of WTC (including 70% of child care costs), as earnings are modest. School holidays are getting to be difficult.

Possible new scenario:

Employer (the Local Authority) is offering to let LP work 39 weeks a year instead of 52, giving her the school hols off. They will pay salary for the whole 52 weeks, but at 75% of the former salary. LP likes this very much (63% of reduced salary would come back as extra WTC!).

BUT she is worried that the Inland Revenue will say that over the course of the year 39 x 18.5 hours divided by 52 is less than 16 hours a week, when averaged. I THINK I'm right in saying that there's special WTC provision providing for this type of case - ie that the lack of work in the school hols is ignored; and that if salary is paid for every week, so will WTC be, taking into account the lower earnings.

Tell me I'm a genius!

Jim

Term time and seasonal workers - yearly cycle of work

The Working Tax Credit (Entitlement and Maximum Rate) Regulations 2002, Reg. 7
Where a recognised yearly cycle of work exists and the person works at a school, educational establishment, or other place of employment on a seasonal basis, exclude from the calculation of normal working hours, any periods of school holidays or similar vacations when the person does no work.
From TCTM on our CD-Rom


To calculate the normal weekly hours worked by a person who has a yearly cycle use the number of hours normally worked, or that the claimant expects to work during the term or during the period of seasonal work.

This regulation enables people working in schools, other educational establishments or other places of employment (such as the Civil service) where term time working is available to continue to receive WTC during school holidays, or holidays which are broadly similar to school holidays, by taking these periods out of the calculation of normal working hours. It is not intended to cover other "seasonal workers", for example:

A man usually does 35 hours seasonal work a week for 3 months each summer. He can claim WTC during the 3-month period, but when he finishes this seasonal work, his WTC will stop, unless he gets another job within a week of finishing TCTM02406. He cannot get WTC until the next period in which his usual hours of work are high enough for him to qualify again.

Thanks, Gareth. I knew I was a genius !

Jim