The basics of the credit, how Perquity runs it, and the question every owner asks: can my own kids be covered? All answered below.
How it works, the credit math, and your own kids.
Who you have to include, and what childcare counts.
Between the federal credit, the NYS refundable credit, and the deduction, NY employers typically get back 75%–125% of what they spend. Yes, sometimes more than 100%. The calculator runs your exact numbers — entity type, tax bracket, the works.
No service fees, no provider contracts to chase, no payroll headaches. One signup, one monthly payment, and your team has childcare.
Get startedPerquity was built by a CPA, and the founder still answers the email himself. Send your questions, your entity type, your weird edge case — we like those.
Email usHeads up: this page is general education, not tax or legal advice. Your entity, your numbers, your facts — run it by your own CPA before you act. (We’re CPAs too. We’d tell you the same thing in person.)
Perquity is a childcare benefit intermediary — we sit between you, your employees, and the licensed providers, and we do the part nobody wants to do. The whole thing runs like this:
Could you do all this in-house? Sure — it runs about 50 hours per employee per year. We’d rather you didn’t.
Three layers stack on the same childcare dollars. Here they are, in order of how much people underestimate them:
You get 40% of what you spend on qualified childcare back as a federal tax credit — 50% if you’re a small business (average sales of $32 million or less over the last 5 years) — capped at $500,000 a year ($600,000 for small businesses). And since the 2025 law change, paying through an intermediary like Perquity expressly qualifies. That’s not a workaround; it’s written into the law.
One honest note: this credit isn’t refundable and can be limited by AMT — it only helps in years you actually pay federal tax. But it’s never lost: any credit you can’t use now carries forward up to 20 years, waiting until the company can claim it. And even in a year it doesn’t kick in, the deduction below plus the NYS credit usually get you to at least 75% back on their own.
New York stacks its own credit on top — 50% of what you spend on childcare — and it’s refundable. Even if you owe NY nothing, the state sends you a check. (We also serve NJ employers — federal credit only there, for now.)
Whatever the federal credit doesn’t cover, you still deduct as a regular business expense on your federal return. Same on the state side — whatever NY’s credit doesn’t cover, you deduct there. Nothing goes to waste.
If your company pays federal taxes, stacking all three can land you at total savings of close to 125% of what you spend. Yes — more back than you put in. The calculator runs your exact scenario.
Federal: Form 8882, flowing to Form 3800 (General Business Credit). NYS: Form CT-652. If you’re an S-Corp or partnership, the credit passes through to the owners on the K-1 and lands on your personal 1040. We hand your CPA all the numbers.
The honest answer: it depends on how your business is set up.
If your business is a C-Corp and you’re on payroll with a W-2, you’re an employee like anyone else — your children qualify just like your team’s. Or even if you don’t have a team.
For S-Corps, LLCs, partnerships, sole proprietors, and 1099s, the IRS hasn’t issued guidance on whether an owner’s own kids count. We’re watching for it and will update the moment they weigh in. Until then, we don’t sell you certainty that doesn’t exist.
If you have other staff, you can’t offer this only to the owners or the highest-paid people. But as long as the rest of the team is included too, this is not a problem.
For employees’ kids under 13, here’s what qualifies:
Once a kid’s in regular school (age 5+), the school day itself doesn’t count — only a real, separate after-school program does.
Your employees pick from the Perquity provider list — and if their provider isn’t on it yet, they invite them right from inside the system. We handle the contract and onboarding from there.
Short answer: no. You choose who’s in. Just two ground rules:
Rule of thumb: a benefit that covers your team passes. A benefit that mostly covers the corner office doesn’t.