If you miss the July 31st deadline HMRC will give you a 30 day grace period, but then your tax credits may stop.

If you claim tax credits you should receive a tax credit renewal form by July 15th at the latest. Whether you need to do anything depends on exactly what you've been sent. The bottom line is that if you’ve been sent an annual declaration form, you need to return it or contact the tax credit helpline by July 31st.

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The new paternity rules give parents legal rights to share time off and to split maternity pay.

From Sunday (April 3rd) parents have been given the right to split parental leave during the first year of their baby’s life. Before the change in the rules, fathers were only allowed two weeks off (and it was unpaid) but the new rules let them take far more time off. But while parents have a legal right to share leave, their employer isn’t obliged to let fathers take more time off.

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The government has launched a consultation on plans to make parental leave more flexible in the future.

Currently, fathers can take two weeks’ paid paternity leave when their baby is born and can ask for more leave from when their baby is 20 weeks old as long as the mother has gone back to work. Now the government wants to consult on plans to make parental leave fully flexible. The big change would be that parents would be able to split some of the parental leave between them and switch who takes it, rather than the mother taking the first block and the father taking the rest.

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