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.

sticks hat under arm and claps with gusto at this.

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?

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.

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,

Whatever you say it is almost twice the national average it is a lot of money. Most people earn less than you a so you have more to chuch around than them. [politics of envy apparently] you dont really need the help of the state to keep you children out of poverty though do you?[/politics of envy]

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.

iirc this does indeed classify you as in poverty according to WHO guidelines..all in this together so perhaps a more modest modest holiday now. Are you really wanting benefits so not well off people [45k]can have a modest holiday?
Flash reasonable point but i still think the 19th earl of wherever in Ireland may have just lived a different life from me and most of the population. he may not be best placed to decide on what oublic services we need. Which ones do you think he used? Education, health, social services? Meals on wheels for his old dears?

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?

I met a black ex-miner in Cardiff

racist

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.

If you think that, it’s you missing the point. The main point of this measure is to save money. You appear to agree with the idea that higher rate taxpayers should lose this benefit. Therefore you’re just arguing that other people should also lose this benefit to make it “fair” for the poor rich people who are losing out. Given that would save little extra money by the time the admin was covered – it may save less – that’s not really benefiting anybody is it (apart from civil servants who might be employed by this – in reality they’d probably just be diverted from something more useful though)?

“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

😀
Classic.

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?

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.