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...and instead give 10 hours/week free childcare for 2 year olds.
If you feel strongly enough against, sign the petition [url= http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/keepvouchers/ ]petitions.number10.gov.uk/keepvouchers[/url] and/or [url= http://findyourmp.parliament.uk ]write to your MP[/url]
Haven't the Tories already said they will scrap these plans when they come into power next year?
But we've got to pay for Brown's failed social engineering policies somehow. Who better to pick up the tab other than the 'privileged' middle classes. Expect tax credits and child benefit to be, gotta pay for those child places somehow, how else are those teenage mums going to find time to go shopping and meet their freinds.
Be under no illusion, Cameron sees the same people as easy cash cows too. Long gone are the days of respect for those who work hard for a living.
Depressingly there stumpyjon, I think that you are right.
Under these plans my wife will be working for a loss just to keep her job open until both our kids are in school.
Bloody parents and kids getting free stuff... 😉
I think people should get cash for not having kids! lol
Brilliant I was looking forward to these next year for our ickle one so my missus could go back to work. Childcare is 'kin ridiculously 'spensive.
...and instead give 10 hours/week free childcare for 2 year olds.
Won't that equate to a similar saving for kids over 2 - eg £200 per month for a couple of people getting vouchers?
They'd be better off scrapping the cycle scheme!
my understanding is 10 hours/week free childcare for [b]2 year olds[/b]. NOT OVER 2 year olds. Great if you have a 2 year old.
If it were up to me, you should have to put £100k in a bank deposit account before you're allowed to have kids so that society can use that to pay for all their care, education, medics etc..... 😉
C
But IIRC aren't there already free hours for 3+ year olds? so this effectively just brings the age lower.
They'd be better off scrapping the cycle scheme!
To be honest the cycle scheme is a con. I know of numerous folk on with ctw bikes that work at least a 45minute car journey away! So they get their shiny 'spensive weekend bike for buttons 🙁 (Ok I am jealous 😆 )
[i]Be under no illusion, Cameron sees the same people as easy cash cows too. Long gone are the days of respect for those who work hard for a living. [/i]
Since when did working hard for a living equate to being 'middle class'? You honestly think pushing paper about a desk and going to meeting is hard work.
Fair enough, don't remember getting anything when we made financial sacrifices to have one parent stay at home to look after our own child
To be honest the cycle scheme is a con. I know of numerous folk on with ctw bikes that work at least a 45minute car journey away! So they get their shiny 'spensive weekend bike for buttons (Ok I am jealous )
Of course that happens. What also happens as I've seen here is that a lot of people who'd never have bothered have bought bikes on B2W since they can't resist a bargin and have then actually started to ride to work - some only occassionally, but some regularly. On balance, I'll bet that works out as a good thing.
Brilliant I was looking forward to these next year for our ickle one so my missus could go back to work.
You will still be able to claim - without looking at the exact details and running from memory, people can apply up till 2011 and take advantage of it until the child is of school age. IE, if you have a baby now you can claim in 2011 and keep on claiming until 2014. 2015 is the last date any tax benefit can be taken.
Or something like that.
Going slightly off-topic, but I'm looking into childcare vouchers as BB Jr has just started nursery and Mrs BB has gone back to work P/T. I phoned the tax credit folk who, despite being as helpful as they can given the whole tax credit system isabout as complicated as it can possibly be, said that if I did use childcare vouchers they'd need to see a whole hill of documentation to further ammend our tax credit claim.
As the benefit of the tax credit is likely to amount to f'all now Mrs BB is back at work and our combined income is write on the borderline, am I right in thinking that the childcare voucher is going to give me far more benefit than the, er, benefit from the tax credit system?
quick question on the childcare vouchers - what is the max. per month I can put into them? My company says it's something like £150, I thought it was a good bit more.......
quick question on the childcare vouchers - what is the max. per month I can put into them? My company says it's something like £150, I thought it was a good bit more.......
Its about £240 I think, but both parents can claim the £240 giving a monthly total of £480.
We use them and despite the savings they give, if we where to put both our kids in nursery when my wife worked we would still be out of pocket.
So friends and family help out with one of them, so the wife actually earns something.
They always said being a Nurse was a vocation, but it really is true when working for the NHS on a contract and having young kids.
Looking forward to when they are both at school, only 4 years to go 🙁
Scrap the military and scrub a '0' off all house prices. We've save billions on military hardware and pensions and no-one would have to prostrate themselves to pay for the house they live in. Then we could revert to a parent being the primary carer for their kids through-out their childhood.
I thought the plan was to keep it for basic rate taxpayers? Seems fair enough to me - the higher tax rate starts at substantially more than most people earn.
i thought they were just going to reset the limits to the people that actually need the credits? there are people I work with that have a household income of £80k and still get credits...
rootes1, if both parents earn £40k then they're basic rate payers and would still qualify under the proposals!
My mate started that petition 😀
It's £243 max per month that you can sacrifice at the moment. Sind you avoid tax it then effectively saves you around £100 per parent per month depending on how much tax you pay.
ranos - higher rate of tax is £37400. If you are higher rate tax payers then you should be able to afford childcare without the vouchers. I can't think of an arguement against this. I'm a higher rate tax payer and haven't claimed them for our childcare because I feel like it's not ethical, even if I pay huge amounts of income tax.
My issue with these schemes is that people who earn more save more, surely those on low incomes should save more than those on high incomes.
I don't care really as junior is 12 years old and I earn loads 😉
So Gordon brown comes up with another scheme designed to confuse people so they don't get full value from the system. Sounds familiar. It's only the idle single mums who gain from benefits, if you don't earn a decent wage it's because you're lazy. And all the children who grow up with help from the benefit system also become work shy and never do the kind of jobs that help anybody. Sigh.
It was in the paper at the weekend that Brown is shelving the plans as he's getting such a backlash from both his own party and the opposition.
if you don't earn a decent wage it's because you're lazy.
pmsl! Seriously? Talk about arrogant and deluded, not to mention generalising to the point of idiocy. 🙄
Sorry, sarcasm doesn't come thru very well on emails. I'm not fortunate enough to be on a good wage and I was having a go at those that think the lower paid shouldn't have kids and all single mums are a waste of space, etc.
Oops 🙂 glad to gear it though!
Of course, if you weren't so damn lazy, you'd be able to afford a butler like I have to do your posts for you with sarcasm properly denoted 😉
Servants night off 😀
...not to mention punctuation 😉
These are badly targeted benefits, most of it goes to higher rate tax payers.
That said, I'l be milking it before its phased out
Is that really right - the bit about most of it?
higher rate of tax is £37400
No, its £43875, if you don't have any taxable benefits, £37400+ your tax free alowance
Is that really right - the bit about most of it?
Yes, they are the people who get most benefit, nearly 2X that of basic rate tax payers, so its still badly targeted from that point of view.
Same with the CTW scheme, it's the well off that save the most.
Yep 🙂
djglover your are of course right. Your total cumulative tax allowance before higher rate is £43875 - even less reason to need vouchers!
Ransos > exactly is it right that a household with an income of £80k from two adults get tax credits!
? No if you can,t afford kids Don,t have them I say
I thought tax credits topped out at a household income of around £58K?
^ wot they said - poorly targetted and also not universally available (again, like the bike schemes). "free" nursery hours for all is much better IMO (though we used the scheme when we had the chance)
Childcare vouchers aren't tax credits.
yer i know
havent even bother claim what tax credits we could be due...form looks a nightmare. but we are going in hard on the childcare and cycle scheme through work 🙂
Saying "it's the well off that save the most" technically is true, but not really reflective of the real situation is it?
The well off save the most as they are higher rate tax payers, but they also pay the most through tax the rest of the time, don't they? And saving an extra £150 at most on the CTW scheme is nothing in comparison to the extra tax paid over lower rate tax payers (i know it's all relative, so they still earn more - but that's the way life is....)
DrP
The government need more people to work and pay tax. Childcare vouchers encourage parents back to work. Sure middle earners may save more but they also pay more tax* and therefore fund more help for lower earners. Simples. However, this won't be simples to Mr. Brown et al. They don't like people doing well. It goes against everything Labour stands for.
*Lower earners obviously don't pay as much and the higher earners have accountants to avoid tax.
Yes the well off pay more in taxes but they generally still have more left afterwards to pay for holidays , cars etc. The paradox is that the schemes mentioned ie CTW and childcare vouchers save you more if you are in the highest tax bracket, but certainly in the case of childcare surely they are supposed to be helping those less well off get back to work. As for CTW how many people can honestly say they bought a bike on the scheme purely for getting to work. I know a surgeon that has just bought a very expensive carbon road bike through the scheme and it is hardly ever out of the garage until the weekend. These are just two examples of Gordon Brown over complicating things.
The government need more people to work and pay tax. Childcare vouchers encourage parents back to work
hmmmmm, I'd hope that the well-recognised benefits of sending a child to nursery (even if the parents aren't at work) might be the principal motivation here
I use my CTW bike evey weekday, and sometimes at the weekend. And yes I pimped it. 🙂
I think "well off" here is relative. Higher rate tax payers are not some sort of fat super rich. The majority of us have progressed through "ordinary" jobs and are on PAYE, so no accountants etc like the genuinely high earners.
If you're a middle ranking civil servant, teacher, serviceman etc, you are likely going to be caught by the higher tax bracket (which hasn't really changed substantially since I started work in 91...
I've paid the higher rate of tax since 2003 and have become progressively worse off during that period.
Childcare costs are incredibly high, especially if you are living / working away from family support networks (Normo Tebbs told my generation to "get on our bikes" - so C2W is an ironic benefit!!!). Friends of ours were paying nearly £800 / month for 3 days nursery care for their daughter...
... and it doesn't stop when they go to school. School hours and holidays are notoriously incompatible with workplace hours, so we need morning and evening childcare for ours - or one of us stops working...
My nursery costs are going to be £1700 a month for 3 days, I have twins and my wife will return to work shortly. The vouchers are a mere drop in the ocean.
"The well off save the most as they are higher rate tax payers, but they also pay the most through tax the rest of the time, don't they?"
You're only considering income taxation. If you add in all taxes, direct and indirect, you find that the highest percentage is paid by the poorest quintile.
"I think "well off" here is relative. Higher rate tax payers are not some sort of fat super rich. The majority of us have progressed through "ordinary" jobs and are on PAYE, so no accountants etc like the genuinely high earners."
The median income in the UK is £24k. Higher rate tax starts at £43k, and those paying it are the top 10% of earners.
So relatively speaking, higher rate tax payers are very well off.
Higher rate tax starts at £43k, and those paying it are the top 10% of earners.
IIRC the higher rate always started in the mid £30k s???, and is now £37,400. My employer(s) certainly deducted from my packet from about 34k onwards....
You're forgetting your personal allowance, which takes it up to £43k.
