Child Maintenance - Salary Sacrifice & Avg Nights

Me and the ex have separated and currently going though divorce proceedings. Family home has been sold, all financial issues resolved and therefore we expect a relatively smooth process.

We have a family based arrangement for child maintenance which to me has been working fine. Payments are made timely and whilst we don''t use the CSM we agreed to use the online calculator to make the calculation. She now says she wants to use the CSM and I am resisting as I begrudge paying a 20% fee to come up with the same answer. Money that could be far better spent or saved for the children.

Couple questions:

1. I have looked everywhere on-line and spoken to child maintenance options who also couldn''t give a firm answer. So here goes, salary sacrifice - well known concept used by many employers these days to provide benefits to employees in an efficient manner for tax and National insurance.

Through my employer i sacrifice salary for my pension and a lease car. To be clear this is not something I have started recently, I have been doing this since 2006 so no change in pattern.

The new rules state CMS use gross income which they collect from p60 data at HMRC. The figure on anyone''s p60 will be gross taxable income which is after any element of salary sacrifice. I have been calculating maintenance on this amount which I believe is correct. Comments/thoughts please?

2. Secondly, average nights. How does CMS apply this in its calculation. I am guessing it''s not practical (or maybe this is why they charge 20% fee) to re run calculations every week depending on nights expected etc.

I currently have my children different amounts each week and in school holidays its far more. For example this week I may have 4 nights if my weekend but next week could be 1 night if away with work, February half term could be 5 nights Etc

To date I have used the average nights in a month and calculated the monthly payment on this basis. I expect to reconcile this after 12 months and once my P60 is available.

As of Janaury 31st, in the 6 month period proceeding I had the children on average 2.9 nights per week. I claim 3 nights per the calculator.

Again comments / thoughts etc

To be clear I love spending time with
My children, where possible i arrange my work around school drop off/pick up and have no problem paying maintenance. I also pay additional amounts for swimming lessons, school uniform Etc such that they are not carrying bags of clothes bag and for and feel like parcels. I don''t take any adjustment or consideration for these costs.

Thanks and any advise or experience greatly appreciated.

Salary sacrifice doesnt appear on your p60 so you wont need to pay cm on this amount.

Thanks that was my understanding. Effectively it''s income I don''t receive and get taxed on p11d on company car benefit.

Any thoughts on night calculation.

Thanks

Costa21 wrote:
[quote
As of Janaury 31st, in the 6 month period proceeding I had the children on average 2.9 nights per week. I claim 3 nights per the calculator.

Again comments / thoughts etc
[/quote]

CMS would round this DOWN to two nights per week for assessment purposes.

William,

thanks for your reply.

So in simple terms because salary sacrifice is a scheme that as its name suggests is where an individual sacrifices salary and the year end P60 includes gross taxable income which will be after any salary sacrifice, the CMS use the P60 figure.

I would suggest that someone somewhere updates the guidance to make this clear as I have been searching the internet for weeks and spoken to child maintenance options and nobody could give a clear answer.

It would also stop accusations being made towards individuals where this is being seen as a way to reduce maintenance deliberately or a loophole. It''s within the rules.

Do you have any thoughts on the avg night calculation ? We have a agreed planner through August 31t that will mean I have the children 156 nights in the 12 months since we started the arrangement. Currently at an average of 2.9 per week but depends how you make the calculation. what do CMS do please ?

thanks

Phrase it differently.

156 nights over 52 weeks is 3 per week exactly.