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Plans to cut child benefits
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11470983Ministers have defended plans to cut child benefits to higher earners amid criticism they represent an "attack" on already hard-pressed families.
From 2013, benefits will be removed from any family where one parent earns more than about £44,000 a year.
Labour said the move - aimed at saving £1bn a year - undermined the coalition's claim to be a family-friendly government.
But Chancellor George Osborne described the plans as tough but fair.
So basically its done by the highest earner, making more than £44k, so if both parents earn a combined £80k, then they still get benefit.
I understand that cuts need to be made, and I agree with the concept that the richer should have cuts made before the poorer. Not because I agree with any tax assault on the rich, but benefits are there to benefit people (who need it), if someone has a child and their household has one or more of the two parents earning more than £44k a year, how can that be classed as hard pressed.
Shouldnt benefits not be there to help people who need it, not potentially help people live beyond their means?
I know in central london and other places, that £44k a year doesnt stretch as far as it does in other places, but its still a lot of money.
Add in plans to cap benefits at a max of around £26k, and everyone is kicking off?
What I dont understand is that everyone seems to have the view that they are all entitled to free money from the state. Id rather have the poorest in society receiving benefits, and have them taken from the richer, than have a country that doesnt pay benefits.
Surely if someone who lives in a household and has a kid, and earns more than £44k and cant survive or would be hard done by if they lost £1,700 (thats two kids) a year, is surely living beyond their means.
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Anyone else been keeping up with today's proposal from Gideon?
Well, the idea is that universal child benefit will be abolished with those earning over £44k (i.e. 40% tax bracket) no longer being eligible. Which is fair enough, as a concept.
Except, as you would expect from the Tories, it doesn't appear to be that well thought out - as Dizzy explains here.
Whoops!
This really hasn't been thought through, imo.
Melian, you have a good point there, but its interesting to think that someone earning £50k cant get by with children.
Once again someone raises a point about cutting something, and rather than think well actually I earn a lot of money, someone else is getting a better deal than me.
I'm in that tax bracket and this would affect me and I really don't have an issue with the concept, other than the fact that it pretty much equates to a hike in my taxes, given that I have three children (although only two will be affected by the time it comes into force)...
My real issue with the policy though is how ill thought out it is. According to the policy my family will currently lose income because I am the sole earner but I earn over £50k. However, if I took a £10k pay cut and my wife earned £40k we would both have a greater income (by £30k p.a.) and also still get Child Benefit of about £1,400.
Gideon's advisors are obviously well worth their money.
Worth pointing out, as well, that if both parents are earning £43,000, they're probably both working full time, so could be paying out upwards of £10,000 a year on childcare just for one child.
... and so would still be thousands better off.
Plus doesn't that undermine the whole "one parent staying home and raising a child" ideology which the Tories are supposed to hold?
Like I say, the concept is sound, the implementation proves what people like Alastair Campbell were saying during the election, the Tories policies were not put under enough scrutiny...
Tories in 'saying one thing, doing another' shocker
I grant you that it's not a perfect system, but I think it's easy to forget childcare costs when people get all uppity about who has disposable income and who doesn't.
When did they hold that? the fifties? I've not heard that being mentioned as Tory party policy...
Obviously in this instance my family would be better off apart, financially. Either way this seems to fly in the face of other policies.
Given the way our populations demographic is going that national need probably still stands.
The key word being financially
So would mine financially. But that's not why I'm married with kids.
Its way overdue to be honest, and whilst you can quibble with the mechanism it seems the right idea.
Stephanie Flanders gives a good overview of why they've decided on this system.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/stephanieflanders/2010/10/no_such_thing_as_an_easy.html
It would be like JSA, being based on your savings. You get 100% as long as your savings isn't as much as £6k. Then it's a sliding scale from £6k to £16k and at £16k you get nothing.
Of course there is nothing wrong with taking benefits away from high earners i think most people have been calling for this for years.
But to take it from a family with an income of 44k who you should remember are paying a higher tax than most already, but still allow a family on 80+k to claim it is just comical.
The sad thing is this will just be the start as they begin to show their true colours and turn the screw on everyone but the higher earners.
No worse than Labour's 10p tax fiasco. No party has exclusivity to 'ridiculousness'.
I know that I am far too young to remember the bad old days of 'old' Labour when it was in power, but I am well aware of the consequences of their own 'true colours'. The country was in an absolute mess. Seriously. Don't get distracted by your rose-tinted spectacles. :cool:
If you understand the complete shit we are facing as a country now, then you will understand that these cuts will always piss off someone off regardless. Remember too, that the Libs are fortunately there to steady the ship. Cuts must come.
Although this example of the cut in child benefits has been poorly thought through, generally speaking, the Lib Dems could always walk away from anything too drastic, if needs be, which would make the Tories virtually toothless. So there is some level of checks and balances in place.
I'm very aware that higher earning people pay more and a higher rate of tax, but for the first £6k they dont pay tax, and the next £x's after that they pay the same rate as others, its only once they go over the higher tax brackets, that they pay 40%, but only on the amount over that limit. They dont just get taxed 40% on everything.
The question you have to ask is, why do people feel they have the right to free money? Benefits are supposed to help people who need it, someone earning enough to go into the top tax band, does not need that money so much.
Yes its a bit of a bad anomaly that a couple with a combined income of £80k could keep their child benefit, and I know it is very unfair, but thats a seperate issue. People need to start justifying why someone who earns £44k deserves to keep child benefit, not just complain about the situation of others.
If people spent more time justifying why something shouldnt be taken away from them, rather than argue about other people who get more and better, or less and worse than them, then maybe they might suceed.
Pretty much goes along the lines of, well If I earned £44k a year, around £20k a year more than the national average, I should be allowed to keep it purely because someone else is? Id argue that keeping the benefit still encourages people to work hard and get these high earning jobs and make something of themselves, knowing they can still get this benefit.
Yes there are badly thought out bits of this, but if you were in their position and you absolutely had to cut benefits in some way, what would you do?
Just because things are the ways they always have been, shouldnt mean they are the way they always should be.
If only there was something else the government could do, a third way to avoid fucking up millions of people and untold public services with savage cuts...
Oh wait...
Real cost of tax evasion and avoidance up to £70bn a year
But let's not ruffle the feathers of the rich and powerful- many of whom are, of course, good friends of the Tories- or the likes of Vodafone and Tesco, who alone deprive the taxpayer of many billions of Pounds in dodged tax.
No. Far better to fuck the unemployed, disabled and parents of young children.
So the main issue here is the immoral values of members of society as a whole, rather than the government having to cut credits to people who frankly dont need them.
Does this post mean that you are ready to answer the question I posed to you a little while ago (or will there be more avoidance/evasion) ?
For the sake of continuity, can you repost that question for us please?
ETA: if it's the question on post 25, the answer is of course 'no'- provided they are real, state-sanctioned benefits rather than some dastarly scheme by thieving scum (sorry, skilled accountants).
Your undivided loyalty for your God and master is a sight to behold.
I guess that faithful servility would class, as real, such schemes (created by state-sanctioned accountants) as:
A certain Granny Bond, buying her grandson James, the maximum amount of tax free National Savings investments.
Or Auntie Avoidance making the maximum contributions to her nephew Aladdin's ISA accounts.
Anyway this is now adding to the debate http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11478320 by saying that married people might get a further tax break.
However there is a line in the article with David Davis saying that all these changes would infact encourage mothers to go out to work rather than staying at home - I am assuming that he is suggesting that this would be a bad thing.
However this could also have the added benefit of fathers possibly cutting down on their number of days at work to bring their income in at under £44K - increasing the ammount of time they spend with thier children - which isnt' such a bad thing is it?