From: David Floyd 
Newsgroups: uk.finance
Subject: Re: Child tax credits etc etc
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 17:40:34 +0100

In message of Thu, 30 Mar 2006, Thom writes
>
>You _can't_ claim before the birth.

If you're talking about tax Credits, then, YES you can claim before the 
birth. Anyone can make a claim - you don't need children - and you could 
be earning £100K.  You wouldn't get anything but your claim would stand. 
This is a good stance to take for Self Employed with fluctuating 
profits, because if there is a bad year with a sudden drop in profits 
they will get WTC from the beginning of the relevant tax year (payments 
backdated).  If there was no claim in place then the claim can only be 
backdated 3 months, and often Self-employed don't know how bad a bad 
year is until sometime later when the accountant draws the accounts up.

>They can back-date the claim a few weeks
13 to be precise.

DF