[Closed] Child benefit cuts

am i correct in thinking that this has gone six pages and as of yet no one has said....will someone think of the children.

we are above the threshhold and dont care because we can afford it.
funny that.

yes ho hum that case is true but it probably applies to a very small number of cases [if any] in the real world. It seems clear that someone on more money will almost always have more money than someone who gets less money. If STW want to donate me about 20k this year I will happily let you know the outcome of this experiment.
The principle is ok but the public service mechanism that delivers this is rubbish but cheap ....like most Tory public sector policies.
A good idea badly executed basically

Not by a long stretch, especially if that's your only household income. Is a household with 2 incomes of £ 22.5k rich, bet the individuals earning £ 22.5k don't think of themselves as rich.

But they are.

We're on a combined income of £sub-40k. We're not rich, but we're a damn site better off than many and would manage without Child Benefit, though we'd have to go without somewhere. If we had an extra £5k a year, it'd be entirely surplus income.

Of course, we haven't over-extended ourselves to buy a house in the 'right' part of town, two cars and a plasma TV.

Of course, we haven't over-extended ourselves to buy a house in the 'right' part of town, two cars and a plasma TV.

Miketually - I'm a higher rate tax payer and used to do one; but the inland revenue told me they didn't want a tax return any more. As everything is PAYE and I did the sums at home and noone owed anyone anything I haven't sent them one for a few years now.

So the top few % of earners who earn almost double what the average person does is not rich? Hmmmmm It really is only the top few % thsat earn this much.

The average house price is only 225 k including the south east. the rest of the UK its a lot less

I am not being blindly prejudiced against people earning that much - a pal of mine is a highly skilled highly regarded doctor - he earns well more than that. He is probably worth it.

Some folk here need a reality check. £45 000 barely adequate to live on? Not rich?

Try jobseekers allowance of £60 odd quid per week, try working in asda for £14 500 per annum Try being a care assistant in a nursing home for £6.50 an hour Driving a bus for £18 000 pa

A good idea badly executed basically

I don't think the Tories have exclusive rights to that. Point I made earlier though is that if the government can't be bothered to do things in a properly fair way how the can you expect private business to do the difficult things when they are morally the correct thing to do when the government can't be bothered.

Looking at Salary medians for people in full time in PAYE. 50% is ~£25K, top 25% above ~£32K, top 10% above £44K, top 5% above £58K.

*Caveat this exludes self employed, contractors who may be very well payed, but it's most of the population.

So to everyone who is a higher rate tax payer. You are well off nationally and you are going to suffer a little bit financially but to joe average you are doing well.

Higher rate tax payer and really not bothered to see child benefit go.

stumpy - its not fair that rich people are losing a benefit they don't need?

[i]that system already exists for tax credits. Far from perfect admittedly but maybe the government should try and make a fair but comples system work better rather than just taking the easy option. [/i]

Yes, and have you filled in the forms, plus had to keep up changes to income.

And as for the £45k and rich - that doesn't buy a family house where we are (especially at the current mortgage rates).

IME rich starts at 6-figure household incomes, especially when talking of two plus kids etc. And even then its more, 'well-off', than loaded. And this is IME.

And TJ, if it wasn't for people like me who were paying in excess of the average salary just in tax, nevermind NI, there wouldn't be the cash for the NHS and all the other services. But I fail to see why we should be screwed.

And as for the £45k and rich - that doesn't buy a family house where we are (especially at the current mortgage rates).

How are the 90% of people earning less than that buying their family homes? Or the teachers, nurses, etc?

6-figures is triple what I'm earning. We have two kids and could afford for the wife to give up work while they were younger.

TandemJeremy - Member
stumpy - its not fair that rich people are losing a benefit they don't need?

Agreed! Until recently, Richard Branson was automatically entitled to Child Benefit. WTF? I mean, really, WTF? Those who don't need it shouldn't get it. That allows more for those who really do need and deserve it.

IME rich starts at 6-figure household incomes

have you ever looked at what go's on in the world?

agree stump and agree TJ.
I dont believe in gideon unites the left and right I take it all back he is a political genius 😯

£45 000 barely adequate to live on? Not rich?

There's a big difference between those two extremes, of course it's adequate to live on, money to chuck around far from it, especially if you aren't lucky enough to have parents around you subsidising the child care costs through either their money or time.

Try jobseekers allowance of £60 odd quid per week, try working in asda for £14 500 per annum Try being a care

Been there, done that, most people earning good money will have at some point earnt a lot less. I've been made redundant 3 times and have taken what ever work was available, I do know what it's like living on a low income.

I think there's a lot more people around the country with joint incomes in excess of £ 45k than people realise, either that or the tide of personal debt in this country is even bigger than I realised.

Fair point about the average house price being skewed by the South East (although rather a lot of people live down there so it's still pretty relevant to them). Let's look at the North West, not the most affluent part of the UK, plenty of terraced housing, average house price £ 153k. So you still need to be earning around £ 44k to make the standard mortgage calculation. Only the rich can sensibly afford an average North West home?

TJ

stumpy - its not fair that rich people are losing a benefit they don't need?

I've said a couple of times that I agree I don't think households on this level of income should get benefits. I was gobsmacked that we were eligible for tax credits given our income (a Labour policy I think).

What I have an issue with is people thinking £ 45k a year makes you rich, comfortable yes, lavish lifestyle, far from it. And I take exception to the Tories playing to people's prejudices when they tackle something contentious like removing universal benefits (which needs doing) by trying to make out only people who 'don't deserve it' will be affected. A lot of hard working people who are not rich are suddenly going to find their modest holiday is no longer affordable. This is not going to hurt the genuinely rich at all, it'll hurt middle income households and lot more people are in that bracket than most people realise.

The problem isn't who gets money and who doesn't, the problem is that our culture has no grasp of effective management of resources.

Name one body or organisation in the government that ensures optimum efficiency when it comes to how our resources are managed. It's like a sink without a plug and we chuck more and more money into it. They take out loans from their friends after paying their lackies a fortune to do nothing. Then we pay back interest on the loans.

All the smart people are in business, they spend all thier time coming up with ideas on how to get money, away from us. The idiotic incompetent politicians and their even more useless lackies are the wrong people for the job.

Here's a simple question for you folks, if our entire species is up sh1t creek who led us here?

We could say it was the bankers or the politicians or this group or that, but the simple fact is the rich and poweful have shown a complete inability to lead our people anywhere except to hardship, heartache and the pointless way of life that we all call the ratrace.

Wake up! you can debate these policies or this political groups incompetence for a thousand years, it changes nothing.

Politics doesn't work, for one simple fact the average person in our culture is a TV brain washed imbesile, politicians have to connect with said imbesiles to get voted in.

So basically Morons talking sh1t to imbesiles sums up politics!

The bottom line is we need two things, effective management of resources and a philosophy that emphasizes quality of life not just the persuit of wealth, power or status!

And as for the £45k and rich - that doesn't buy a family house where we are (especially at the current mortgage rates).

Surely most people don't buy a big family house as their first house?

of course it's adequate to live on, money to chuck around far from it,

An interesting aside. Those on the left choose to call George Osborne "Gideon", as he chose to use a different name. However, no one chose to call Gordon Brown "James" after he chose to use a different name. I wonder why....

Now, if Torquil Farquar Willington-Smythe Brown had chosen to change his name to Gordon, I wonder if it would have been the same....

Hurrah for inverse snobbery!

😉

A lot of hard working people who are not rich are suddenly going to find their modest holiday is no longer affordable.

A lot of hard working people who are not rich are suddenly going to find their modest holiday is no longer affordable. This is not going to hurt the genuinely rich at all, it'll hurt middle income households and lot more people are in that bracket than most people realise.

Stumpy - sorry squire but you need a reality check

£45 000 is not middle income - its the top 10% of full time earners so the top 5% of all workers! Its nearly twice the average!

Far less people are in this bracket than you seem to think. It is not on household incomes but single earners. You are talking 500 000 people, The top 500 000 earners in the country.

Reality check for Stumpy please!

I think I'm going to give up on this, I've said repeatedly I don't think HOUSEHOLDS on £ 45k should get benefits and I don't think a HOUSEHOLD income of £ 45k makes you rich. And that's the key to what's got me angry about what the Tories are doing, HOUSEHOLDS on £45k will (correctly) cease to get the benefit whilst other HOUSEHOLDS on £ 80+k will. How can this be right.

Right I'm off to bathe in a bath of fivers, can't afford the water meter anymore.

HA

A good overview of UK earnings here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom

You've got to be careful with stats, especially when pensioners make up such a large proportion of households. And also the impact of the number of people who are now self-employed and consequently 'manage' their income to ensure HMR&C gets as little as is possible.

I don't know and I'm too tired and frightened now. 🙁

D'you like me new bird?

[img] [/img]

I met a black ex-miner in Cardiff

Can't read all that through but it seems quite a few people have missed the point (as usual). The issue is not about whether people on £ 45k need benefits (they probably shouldn't have them), it's about treating people equally and consistently, not attacking one small group (higher rate tax payers) because the general population will be happy with that.

"However, no one chose to call Gordon Brown "James" after he chose to use a different name. I wonder why...."

That would just have been confusing, I would have sat through the news for an interview with James Brown, and then been flummoxed by the appearance of a fat,slightly goz eyed Scot as opposed to the Godfather of Soul.

I'm assuming it's been done on the 40% tax rate to avoid the usual Labour way of setting up some useless call centre/computer system that actually costs three times as much as the savings it makes?

I expect the usual reaction in all the papers tomorrow - there'll be one person on £44000 and 37p complaining bitterly about the loss of 2 grands worth of benefit. And no doubt somebody else complaining that they now can't afford Jemimas school fees.

Though I do agree with the idea of stopping benefit after kid number 2 regardless.

The real kickback might only happen in 15 years time - if anything like us the child benefit is going into the little un's pot for university fees or house deposit. There might be some young adults with less in their student account in a few more years, certainly with the child savings thing being scrapped too.

This is not going to hurt the genuinely rich at all, it'll hurt middle income households and lot more people are in that bracket than most people realise.

So you'd prefer they just concentrated on targeting the poor like they are with most of their other measures?

Top earning middle class people having to take a slightly less fancy holiday? Oh the humanity!!

I would have sat through the news for an interview with James Brown, and then been flummoxed by the appearance of a fat,slightly goz eyed Scot as opposed to the Godfather of Soul

What I found quite strange was a bit on the news this morning saying people would negotiate their salary down to come in below the cut off. I'd have thought they'd be pushing for more to make up the lost income.

Who said that? What nonsense. Who's going to go to their employer and say 'oh could you reduce my salary a bit so I can get an extra forty pounds a week child benefit please?'

What a load of tosh. If I was their employer and they asked me that I'd sack them. i'd just plant filthy pron on their computer and have them fired for being a dirty bugger.

The bastards. Got me all angry just thinking about it.

(Goes off to smash something up)

What pees me off are Migrants claiming and getting child benifits
for there kids abroad

What do you mean, Grantway?

[url= http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/childbenefit/start/who-qualifies/live-work-abroad.htm ]

If you're going abroad permanently, or expect to be away for more than 52 weeks, you won't qualify for Child Benefit unless both of the following apply:
you are moving to an EEA country or Switzerland
you are paying UK NICs or receiving a UK National Insurance-related benefit

That?

What's wrong with that?

I could accept this if
It was based on a household income
It didn't alow familys to earn £80k+ and still pay
It wasn't aimed at those who would just have to get on with it
It didn't penalise us for decisions we have made

And

The same rules were applied to those who choose not to work

However

That would be difficult
Unpopular
Involve work
Cost money

By the way, earning £40k+ isn't something that happens by luck or chance. Nor by education or privelage alone(a few GCSE's were my formal eductaion). Benefits are not a right, I don't know how much we get (if anything), nor do I care or need the money, however, I do object to the way this is dealt with.

grantway - Member

What pees me off are Migrants claiming and getting child benifits
for there kids abroad

I assumed this was a pisstake.
do you seriously think this happens?

Proof please

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/majornews/6475165/Britain-pays-child-benefit-for-more-than-50000-children-living-abroad.html

He added: "The main purpose of child benefit is to support families living in the UK, and so the general rules for this benefit mean it is not paid to children who live outside the UK.

"However, under EU rules, which have been in place since the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community in 1973 and which are applied by all Member States, a European Economic Area national working and paying compulsory social security contributions in one EEA country can claim family benefits for their family resident in another EEA country.

"The purpose of these rules is to help guarantee rights of free movement for workers throughout the EEA."

on the main issue:

for those just over the trigger point:
the simple answer is where applicable to to reduce you hours using the flexible working legislation for parents.

keep yourself just under the threshold, legally get the benefit, take more money home in total. If you are smart enough to earn the money you should have already worked this out.

Woohoo! I am entitled to child benefits ... 😆

All I need now is to spread my seeds ...

I met an ex Gurkha working as a doorman in Plymouth. He told me that this country had been wonderful to himand his family and that he couldn't understand how others simply scrounged their way through life.

Well having skimmed read most of the posts I think the amount you takehome is relative to what generation you are from and whether you;ve been completed screwed over by ridiculous property prices.

If you earn £45k and are sitting in your nice detached house that tripled in value in the last decade then I expect you won't notice.

If you earn £45k, had to live with parents for 3 ****ing years to buy a crappy 2 bed terrace with most of your income going on the mortgage you are not rich

For me and the missus this is another frustration as people who will most likely never claim benefit but also never likely to earn enough to be comfortable.

Just basing it on earnings is not the answer, benefits needed to be based on total accumulated wealth. We know a couple who don';t work, as they have lots of inheritance but still claim benefits....

I pitty the next generation that are just coming through. They won't even get pensions.

I could accept this if
...
The same rules were applied to those who choose not to work

Just basing it on earnings is not the answer, benefits needed to be based on total accumulated wealth.

Excactly how many times does it have to be pointed out that this is a financial measure not an ideological one? The proposed measure saves more net money than any other way of not paying it to higher income people whilst still paying it to those who need it. End of.

I believe you can't claim unemployment benefit if you have savings over a certain amount.

Housing equity can easily be proven etc.

It is perfectly doable. Yes people will look to get round it, as there always is, no matter what the rules.

How about IT contractors paying themselves minimal salaries and keeping the majority of their earnings in thier company to draw down at a later date. I know alot of people who do this to minalise tax burden. Maybe not a huge % of the uk population, but I would imagine a sizable chunk of tax revenue.

Anyway won't happen as like you said it would be far to much effort to do it, and you rightly point out cost more than it saves.

It's still a shit situation though.

It's still a shit situation though.

Seems bizarre. It will annoy lots of people while saving almost nothing.

How much does it save? About £1Bn, which is a miniscule amount.

It has bizarre effects: people with children on salaries between £48k and £55k are going to be asking for pay cuts. Families on the same joint income will be getting massively different payments.

Inept.

For me and the missus this is another frustration as people who will most likely never claim benefit but also never likely to earn enough to be comfortable.

If you won't earn enough to be comfortable than you will be under the limit thus not be affected by the benefit changes.

One thing that this has bought to light is that families are using child benefit to supplement their lifestyle. There was talk on the news of families needing to move house...if you can't afford it on your WAGE why should the rest of us fund your surrey house?

Also smiling at the irony of some torys getting a bit 'trade union' about it 🙂 It's not fair on the middle class elite!

luked2 as it's so little money can you [s]lend[/s]give me £1 billion?

One thing that this has bought to light is that families are using child benefit to supplement their lifestyle. There was talk on the news of families needing to move house...if you can't afford it on your WAGE why should the rest of us fund your surrey house?

I suspect this is a small minority, or maybe a sample of 1??
The amount I receive (or my wife actually as it is paid to her not me)with two children would not make a "lifestyle" difference unless it was very marginal.
I suspect that the people in Surrey of which you speak are in dire straights if around £120 per month is keeping them from losing their houses!

luked2 as it's so little money can you lendgive me £1 billion?

It is a fair point. We are talking big numbers here and £1bn is a trivial amount.
I would be interested in how many will lose the benefit (we will) and how many feel it is unfair (I dont)
Its a long overdue change and should have been done by a labour govt and not a tory one as its fair and redistributive.
I like having the extra money but hand on heart I dont need it and others do.
How that extra cash will be more "fairly" distributed is another matter and whether this was a fair change to make in light of other changes that could have been made to bring in revenue will be an interesting debate and its valid for those that have lost it to point to other areas such as tax evasion by the rich.

It is a cheap to administer, populist policy measure with some very strange "unfair" anomolies.

It will be interesting to see what other steps are taken to drive down the deficit and if the ultra-rich are asked to contribute a bit more to the economy.

How many people on here who are backing the decision would accept a 10% cut to their income, it doesn't matter if you're earning 20 or 200k - a 10% loss will still require a change of lifestyle.

Have I missed something on the total benefits cap?

Most of the reporting and political comments has been aimed at the high tax btacket cut, but it is the total cap that has caught my eye...

£26k cap to be equivalent to an average salary. This looks to be a mix of money saving and ideology - ie it must be beneficial to work...

BUT, presumably 26k of benefits is net of tax and NI, and therefore equivalent to a £34k+ salary?

Monthly take home on 26k salary is going to be about £1650 - I know this as mrs rkk01 is a teacher. Monthly "take home" on 26k benefits is £2160 - ie £500 A MONTH higher....

There is also something iniquitous with the way the higher tax bracket withdrawal is being presented.

Yesterday (IIRC) this was presented as aimed at "high earners", ie them, not us, the priveliged, the wealthy, the comfortably off. I believe a figure of 5% was being touted (not sure if by journos or by George / Gideon) to emphasis the small and priveliged proportion this applies too.

BUT, over my working career the higher rate of tax has not been increased in line with pay rates. Each year an ever lower level of the working population are cuaght by higher rate tax.

Last night's news was talking about the "top 5%", but also talking about 1.2M families affected, with a further 6.2M families that pay the lower rate being unaffected. By my mathematics, that is more like 15% than 5%...? As ever, statistics being skewed (an abused).

How many people on here who are backing the decision would accept a 10% cut to their income, it doesn't matter if you're earning 20 or 200k - a 10% loss will still require a change of lifestyle.

Are you saying the cut is 10% of your income?
If you are losing benefit then you must be a higher rate tax payer?

If so how many children do you have?

By the way, earning £40k+ isn't something that happens by luck or chance. Nor by education or privelage alone(a few GCSE's were my formal eductaion).

Luck, chance, education and privilege play a pretty big part in it for a lot of people though. Look at many of the high earning careers - you end up needing degrees (a lot of advantages if you come from a privileged background, have parents who can afford to fund university), luck (being lucky enough to be clever enough to do them).

I had the luck to not find university particularly hard, luck that my hobby happened to be a quite lucrative area to work in (computer programming), support from parents who had both gone to university etc. I did a bit of work sometimes to get where I am, but mainly it is a whole lot of luck and just taking chances by working with stuff I wanted to play with, that happened to pay off financially.

If I'd been roughly the same person, but unlucky enough not to be good at playing with computers, I certainly wouldn't have had the same earning potential.

Although having said all that, in the end I chose not to go for the money, changed what I did, dropped a whole big chunk of salary (like >20K pay drop initially), so I'm well under the high tax rate, and even then I don't feel like we desparately need the child benefit.

Joe

top 5% of earners not top 5% of families.

For child benefit to be 10% of your earnings and you to be at risk of losing it you must have lots of children

On the face of it, although this is undoubtedly a somewhat crude, populist measure, I agree with the idea behind it, although my household is one that will lose out as a result, having only a single income in the higher tax bracket.

Something that seems curious to me though - I can appreciate that the proposed cut-off is the simplest to administer and should therefore be the most cost-effective (although with the plan being to recoup money paid through income tax this remains a theory at best!) however, with the Child Tax Credits infrastructure in place already, does the Treasury not already hold the information required to assess income on a household, rather than individual basis?

Someone made a good point earlier in this thread regarding the word 'fair' and the eagerness of politicians to use this word with impunity, as everyone has their own idea of how to quantify this.

I'd also suggest that, given the events of the last 15 years in the housing market, the notion of 'wealthy' is also too complex to be judged by gross income alone, whether its household or individual. At the same income levels, there have been real winners and losers over the last decade, dictated primarily by the property market, so that two families with similar income levels may be at rather different ends of the 'comfort' scale.

In addition to this, when we consider the cost of childcare and the effect on this that the availability of willing and able grandparents (for instance) can have, then variations in disposable income (which is at the heart of the debate here) can become considerable.

For most earners in the upper tax bracket, its probably true to say the universal child benefit is simply another source of income, but nobody likes having income taken away, do they?

How many people on here who are backing the decision would accept a 10% cut to their income

I have done exactly that twice in the past, most recently one year ago when I moved jobs and had to take a pay cut of around 10%.

I was at the dentist this morning and saw a guy with EIGHT children. ( :-O )

He'll be gutted at this news - it's about £500 a month to him.

Child Tax Credits infrastructure in place already, does the Treasury not already hold the information required to assess income on a household, rather than individual basis?

Problems with that -
1)The child tax credits have been plagued with problems, are expensive to administer, and a pain in terms of paperwork for people claiming them. There have been loads of pains with underpayments of tax being taken back, and overpayments taking a long time to get back from the government, and with problems where people don't notify the government of salary changes quick enough.

2)Quite a few high income earners don't qualify for child tax credits, so don't have to claim in the current system, as well as this, quite a few people who might qualify, don't bother claiming - there would be a massive extra administrative burden if you essentially forced everyone who had children to do the tax credit claim, plus an extra financial cost as people who don't bother claiming tax credits all claim them, as they'd be forced to do the paperwork anyway.

3)They (the tories) have been going on about removing or simplifying tax credits for ages, so it would be stupid to hitch a new policy onto an old and (in their view) broken system that is inevitably going to get a major overhaul quite soon.

4)Anything where both parents are taken into account is quite possibly subject to fiddling and fraud about who is and isn't taking parental responsibility for a child, who is living together etc.

I'd also suggest that, given the events of the last 15 years in the housing market, the notion of 'wealthy' is also too complex to be judged by gross income alone, whether its household or individual. At the same income levels, there have been real winners and losers over the last decade, dictated primarily by the property market, so that two families with similar income levels may be at rather different ends of the 'comfort' scale.

Exactly the point I was trying to make, but put much much better....!

Fair points joemarshall.

there would be a massive extra administrative burden if you essentially forced everyone who had children to do the tax credit claim

Just on this one - they have said that they'd expect people who'll stop getting the benefit to stop claiming so that they don't have to fill in any forms so for most, that will mean no overall change eg still no form filling

the "top 5%", but also talking about 1.2M families affected, with a further 6.2M families that pay the lower rate being unaffected. By my mathematics, that is more like 15% than 5%...? As ever, statistics being skewed (an abused).

You never need to fill in a forma anyway - you just call them.

surfer - If so how many children do you have?

I am a higher rate tax payer (just), a single earner with 4 kids whose wife stays at home. I guess I'm one of the ones who is worst affected. I'd be better off trying to negotiate a 4 day week and send the misses back to work for a day a week.

I just think it should be based off overall household income and not just if one earns the over the threshold.

We can probably get by without the CB - but we don't live in luxury and don't go on foreign hols, buy designer clothes etc

less benefits for the better off - cap on benefits for the scroungers

what's not to love?

I'm as right wing as they come on here, and sorry, quite simply, anyone on 44 k per year [b]is[/b] comparatively well off, and does not need benefits to supplement their wage. If they cannot afford their children, then they should have thought about that a little earlier and not spent all that money on the new volvo!

No-one on nearly double the median wage needs to live on benefits, its just another example of the entitlement culture that has grown under successive governments.

I have a feeling that the only complaints are from those who's self absorption has failed to give them a sense of perspective on life, and who's interpretation of fairness is "I want what someone else is getting" rather than "do I actually need this money"

Hopefully a first significant step in reigning back the role of the state and making people take responsibility for themselves and their own choices, Bravo!

Tory minister in Newsnight claimed the median wage of those affected was 77 k.

I'd love to earn 77k!!!! I'm on my way there but it'll be a while yet.....

Also, if I was earning 77k then why the hell would I need benefit?..... Greedy barstewards!

Ruddy - hell - if Zulu agree with the policy it must be wrong 😉

Hold on, and bear with me please. I'm not in the UK just now so I'm not following the news at the moment.

But, where does the 44k come from? As far as I know the rates for tax are:

Starting rate for savings 10% £0 - £2,440
Basic tax rate 20% £0 - 37,400
Higher tax rate 40% Over £37,400

So a higher rate tax payer is someone who earns over £37400.

Can someone fill me in on the missing details, thanks

You are confusing families and earners. Poeple without children also earn money. Yes the top 5 % of earners are affected which affects 15 % of families [if your figure is correct]. Tory minister in Newsnight claimed the median wage of those affected was 77 k.

Don't disagree with this - and suspected that this was the difference. And it plays to my comment re elective use of the stats to spin the story... (as ever).

Thinking it through, you'd expect families to be over represented (ie the 15% of families / 5% of earners). Most / many of us earn low wages at the start of our working lives (ie pre-family). Having a family triggers other [i]needs[/i], such as larger more expensive accomodation, that have to be paid for etc - a very strong motivation to maintain or increase income. Also the age range of those supporting a family tends to fit with one of the most productive age ranges of people's careers.

ETA - The median 70ish figure also feels about right - for those families where both parents work.

Zedsdead

taxable in come v total income

so to go into the tax band at £37400 you have to have a total income of £44 000ish ???

Can someone fill me in on the missing details, thanks

You haven't added the tax free allowance. This is what takes it up to £44k.

Zedsdead - those figures are plus your *personal* allowance.

which for most people is £6475.

Cue discussion about getting rid of lumbersome child tax credits regime and instead changing your personal allowance (which could result in low earners getting a negative tax bill in every pay packet - eg, gross wage £120, deductions (income tax) minus £25 take home £145 )

Can I just check - are people still confused by the idea that this is anything other than a money saving measure? You do understand that any more complex means testing regime to catch more people wouldn't save more money?

I'd be better off trying to negotiate a 4 day week

sorry, quite simply, anyone on 44 k per year is comparatively well off,

Someone on 44k [i]should[/i] be comparatively well off - but if they've bought a house in the last (say) 10 years the picture isn't that simple - as has been posted above...

With the "average" UK house price at something like 166k (189k in 2007), that is still well over the oft quoted 3.5x multiplier for the tax threshold earner. And the "live somewhere cheaper" argument only goes so far - property is notoriously more expensive where the jobs are, and cheaper where the jobs aren't...

I'm not arguing against the cut, just the apparent lack of fairness in the application of it. Maybe keep the universal principle and scrap CB altogether - then adjust income tax rates accordingly.

Stopping the "career benefit culture" at the bottom end needs to be better addressed.

As per my first post - the cap still equates to a mid 30s salary 🙄