11.4 Child Care Reimbursement Program

Certain employees are eligible for a lump-sum child care reimbursement. Child care reimbursement is provided on a sliding scale, in proportion to gross family income.

Eligibility:

• The amount of child care reimbursement is determined on a sliding scale, based on employee’s family adjusted gross income. Since the amount of reimbursement and income eligibility may change, employees should consult their bargaining agreement or human resource representatives for detailed eligibility criteria.
• The employee must have had a minimum of $500 in state employment-related child care expenses during the previous calendar year.
• The employee must have been employed in state service as of March 1 of the year in which payment of the reimbursement is made.
• In order to qualify for reimbursement, the child must be 12 or under, unless the child is disabled.
• Since this is a reimbursement program, an employee may not be reimbursed for more than was actually spent on employment-related child care.
• The child care provider may not be the employee’s spouse or a person whom the employee can claim as a dependent. The child care provider must have been 19 years old or older by the end of the previous calendar year.
• Child support payments made by a divorced/separated parent do not qualify as an employment-related child care expense.
• The cost of summer day camp may qualify as an employment-related child care expense. The qualifying test is whether or not the summer day camp was provided in lieu of child care. In other words, if the employee had not attended day camp would child care have been paid? An important supporting factor would be if child care was paid before and/or after day camp.

Benefits are prorated for:

• full-time employees who work more than six months, but less than 12 months in the previous calendar year.
• part-time and seasonal employees who have completed 1,040 hours of regularly scheduled work in the calendar year for which reimbursement is claimed.
• employees who have been on unpaid leave of absence during the reimbursement period.

Application:

• The Application for Child Care Reimbursement may be completed through PRISM.
• Helpful instructions for the PRISM application can be found here Childcare Reimbursement Job Aide.docx
• Eligible employees may apply for reimbursement between March 1 and April 15 of each year. Applications received after April 15 will be considered on a case-by-case basis, but shall not be arbitrarily rejected.
• Documents you will need include: a signed copy of the employee’s federal tax return for the previous year,  a receipt for employment-related child care expenses. The receipt(s) must indicate the period of time that child care was provided during the previous calendar year, the amount paid during the previous calendar year, and the name, home address, phone number, social security number or state vendor number, and signature of the child care provider.

Payment of the child care reimbursement is made in a lump sum, within 30 days of receipt of the completed application by the agency human resource representative.

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