Mumsnet Talk

So says George osbourne on breakfast telly. Missed the details but sounds like it comes in from 2013!

In fact Sian on the BBC looked so surprised that they had a breaking news story, they almost didn't know what to say!

I thought the whole idea was that women who relied on their husbands' goodwill in sharing his high wages were guaranteed some income to pay for their children's essentials?

He says it will affect anyone earning over £44,000.

I'm confused how they will work it out?

Will it be on joint income?

If one parent doesn't pay the higher rate of tax will they be able to claim if the other parent does pay the higher rate?

He is on Daybreak now discussing it.

INterested in how it will be worked out. I earn nothing. DH earns more than £44000.

He is on sky next so let's hope someone asks some more sensible questions!

Agree so far unclear. On household income we might lose, on my own - it is paid to me -not Also income itself is not the be all and end all - if you have other financial commitments the net effect may be less income than in an ostensibly lower income household, especially bearing in mind it would n'l qualify for any other benefits (ie Tax Credits).

Wonder how it works for mixed families. Dh did earn over 40k but is now unemployed ( not claiming) but I was getting CB for my daughters ( not his) whereas if they lived with their Dad with 2 adults on 20k they could claim it?

Not sure I've explained it well there though

Oh great news

If it is on joint income I officially give up. We will be hundreds of pounds worse off by both of us working.

It will likely be gone for people earning much less than that in the future.

Single parents in the 40% tax-band for earnings will be furious if wealthy couples could still claim by transferring the benefit to the non-working or low-pay-receiving partner... Can't imagine someone hasn't spotted that one. Winter Fuel Allowance has to be next up.

Its not going to work is it?

I mean jointly a couple could earn £44,000 and not be paying higher rate tax individually, yet one person could be earning the sole family income of £44,000 and be paying higher rate tax.

The first family doesn't lose CB yet the second family does dispute the household income being the same.



Why has no one asked him how he is going to work it out?

Haven't lived in the UK for years so have no idea how much child benefit actually is. Have one 9 year old and are moving back next year. and someone said to me the other day and I could start claiming child benefit. I assume not now!

I do agree that some people don't need it. But I do feel that the threshold should be much higher.

THe 40% tax band is on earnings over £37,400. He is saying he is expecting that to rise to £44,000 by 2013 when Child Benefit will stop for people in that band.

I assume it will done on household, so if one partner is in the 40% tax band the household wont get CB, I can't imagine it would be much of a saving otherwise, as CB gets paid to the mother, and it's more than likely the mother either stays at home or works part time.

I guess they've gone for using the tax rate as a cheaper way to adminster?

It's crap though, if you're earning £37,400 with 2 or 3 kids and you're either a single parent or your OH is SAHP then you're hardly well off, especially if you live in the more expensive parts of the country.

On the bbc website it says family income.

However again the same problem arises - if family income is based one one wage with one SAHP and therefore no childcare costs then that has less impact than on a two wage household with childcare costs.

So if one of us gave up work then we would be around £500 a month better off.

If I split up from DH and lived alone I would be around even more better off a month.

And the tories think they are reducing their hates of the unemployed and single parents?

"George Osborne said the decision was necessary to help the Government reduce spending.
He told Sky News the change will affect households where at least one worker pays 40% or 50% tax."

Sky News

ANd are tax credits are stopping for families on over £40k?? Double wammy!

It's certainly going to encourage a bit more tax evasion/avoidance!

Chil that is what I thought. I'm a HRT but single parent so have high childcare costs. I need to find a partner who can be a SAHD!

50% tax band I could understand, but not 40% there will be plenty of people in that band that use every penny they get.

I also think that the threshold should be much higher. IN terms of "comfort" when taking into account childcare costs, mortgages and so on, there is a huge difference IMO between £40000 and, say, £70000 in household income.

Personally we don't rely on CB, and so I am not concerned about us losing it. But DB and SIL for example are much more likely to feel the effects of it going as they are on lower incomes (though jointly would probably creep over the threshold).

The devil is still in the detail. DH is waiting to hear if he is getting a promotion, if he does it will put him on the cusp of higher rate but what if he increases his AVCs so he doesn't end up paying 40%. I also work but at low pay for few hours so my pay is just under the level of CB.

Also seems daft that on the one hand they are saying that the Universal Benefit is so no-one loses by working but CB doesn't look to be tapered.

Peppapig- but they are reducing unemployment rates by lots of people giving up work & not claiming jobseekers

If they make CB part of the universal credit + TC then taper it off up to 40k that makes more sense from an admin POV but just administrating CB on it's own will be expensive.

I also think we need to move away from 40k being a high earner. Many families are at this level yet still can't afford their own homes. In fact dh living on his own came north as he couldn't afford a house in Cambridge on a higher rate salary

"I mean jointly a couple could earn £44,000 and not be paying higher rate tax individually, yet one person could be earning the sole family income of £44,000 and be paying higher rate tax.

The first family doesn't lose CB yet the second family does dispute the household income being the same."

The household income is NOT THE SAME.
Single income household £44,000 take home £32,270.40

Dual income household on £22,000 each take home £34208

However the dual income household may have significantly higher childcare costs.

MuminBeds If he's not paying 40% then you'll keep you're CB.

They must be planning to adminster by using tax codes?? So if you're tax code is in that band no-one in your household gets CB?

(I know nothing of tax-codes but just guessing!!)

Lovely way to start the day.

DH earns £43,800. Doesn't pay higher rate tax (on the cusp of it although will check). I earn about £7,000. If we do lose CB would seem a little annoying that two people both earning £30,000 say, wouldn't.

But can see a few more details are needed.

"So if you're tax code is in that band no-one in your household gets CB"

But how would they know that I am in my husbands household? I use my maiden name still, and being in the same house doesn't mean anything.

Oh great!
We have three children and our CB is £188 per month. That will be quite a hole in the finances when that goes.

HOw are they going to handle the home responsibilities aspect of CB?

I am confused

the BBC says that it will effect families earning £44,000 a year. That's the combined wage?

That's me then, just about. Me and DH have a combined wage of £46,000. Jesus Christ. We may sound well off but it's really not true.

Libra

The household income is NOT THE SAME.
Single income household £44,000 take home £32,270.40

Dual income household on £22,000 each take home £34208

That is why childcare costs need to be taken into account in these things I think- if you add childcare for two into the dual income household they will effectively have around
£20,000 yet will not get CB, TC etc.

However if a family only earns £20,000 in the first place they will be entitled to CB and TC probably pushing their income up to around £30,000.

And.... this is yhet another Consrvative policy which will push women back into the home against their will FFS!

A family with more than one or two children is really going to be hit hard, especially with the tax credits too.

"But how would they know that I am in my husbands household? I use my maiden name still, and being in the same house doesn't mean anything."

The same way that they know if you're in the same household for Tax credits, everyone will have to fill out a form when they claim the benefit.

Ok Child benefit is paid to me - I pay basic tax rate (just earn over the personal limit ) .

The benefit is paid to ME not to me AND DH so intrigued how it will work . DH earns just over the £44,000.

Also - don't Child benefit payments count towards the NI payments of many women?

Grrr. The whole point of child benefit is that it was paid to the mother regardless of father's income as it was for the child/ren and last time I looked, my DCs were earning zero.

they really are targetting the benefits and services of women and children aren't they? bastards.

dueling fanjo - yes CB has somthing to do with womens NI - wish someone could explain it fully . Tried to explain it to my MIl but failed [embarrassed]

The HRP aspect has already been altered if you check the Direct Gov website. Once your youngest hits 12, there is no more HRP. That started in April this year (thanks Gordon).

I don't see how they can withdraw this from the person that claims if that person has no income, even if their partner is higher rate. As we have independent taxation, they cannot know (I presume) who is married to whom, unless they go by address, if no benefits other than CB are claimed. I also assume that that would break internal data protection? Big can of worms opening here.

Same here - dh is the higher rate taxpayer butI have always claimed CB. It was always my money, my contribution - when I wasn't working, when on mat leave and it's great because everybody gets it and everybody relys it as being there. NOw there will be a new system which will be expensive to run and complicated and nobody will rely on anything because the thresholds will shift and this beautifully simple benefit which supported the raising of children and the parent taking time to do that will be immersed in a marsh of red tape and acrimony.

Bloody outstanding from the Tories I think

Oh great, DP earns just over this just now and we have four children, Child Benefit of £225 a month.

We need that money it pays for the childrens clothes and school activities.

44K is not a lot of money especially if you are in the South East.

So not only are you taxed at a higher rate after 37K you are also losing Child Benefit and Tax Credits remember?

Avantia we are in almost the same position. I can't imagine it being not on household income tbh although the higher rate tax being bandied about wouldn't suggest that.

Avantia, then you won't get CB after 2013. Tax credits are paid to me and so is CB but I don't work, but because DP earns more than £40k I won't get tax credits next year, nor will I get CB from 2013.

What a lovely way to start the week. Yet another way that the Tory cuts are hitting women hardest

They're talking about it again now... BBC

Ah dh just heard on r4. What a load of shit!

Riven, the tax band limit rises every year with inflation anyway, so he is just assuming that's what it'll be by 2013.

"Around 15% of families - 1.2m people - will be affected by the reform." (also from News

I wish I had time to search for the statistics this may be based on so we could then work out exactly what's going on.

Never had tax credits etc - this is the only 'benefit' I have ever had

And how will they deal with the fact that women who don't work and claim CB avoid having a NI hole - I'm a SAHM with no other income - so will I now lose out on my pension in years to come because I am not doing an income paying job?

And for many women, a partner earning a good salary doesn't mean they have any money of their own. I am very very disappointed by the government. What next - will we tax married couples as couples again?

"The same way that they know if you're in the same household for Tax credits, everyone will have to fill out a form when they claim the benefit."

Ah sorry didn't know that, but then there are obviously going to be huge administration costs. I am sure I read somewhere that just giving everyone CB is in fact CHEAPER than administering it to just the few.

Dueling Yes I rang up NI people a few weeks ago regarding various things and they told me that if I recieved child benefit then I would get pension contributions paid so god knows what they are going to do about that. Take away our pension contributions I guess as we are only looking after children. Nothing important to the economy in the longrun rollseyes

sweetkitty - it's a big hole isn't it.

THis is horrible - withdrawing a benefit from women on the basis of what their mostly male partners earn

I don't mind losing the money - we don't strictly need it. Its a nice extra.

But I work (voluntarily) as an adult educator for young mothers, with a charity. At the moment we can afford this.

If I lose my NI protection, then I don't know if I could do that any more - I need to think about my pension.

By not working and volunteering instead I actually save the government a lot of money, and my reward for this is to have my pension taken off me?

Sorry, I am being quite thick about this. My DP is paying 40% but I earn way below this. Would we still lose the child benefit? It's really scary and we will be £130 a month worse off and when we are paying £130 a day in nursery fees it's going to really hurt.

Yet again, those who work hard are to be penalised! By the time I have paid for child care out of my salary, I would have £50 a week for working full time without child benefit. I know CB is not that much but it DOES help and make it seem a little worthwhile going to work!

I work and therefore pay a fortune in tax & NI. I also pay for child care which in turn generates business tax (from the nursery) and tax & NI from the nursery nurses. If I don't work, I'll get more benefit and put nothing into the system!

No wonder we have such a benefits culture! Apart from CB, I have never claimed benefit in my life. CB helps me afford to be able to work and put money back into the system. Without it I may just as well stay at home!

I didn't know that about NI conts. I will have to get a job. Oh wait! The cost of childcare makes it pointless!

They really are c*%ts!

If they scrap it fir over 50k household they should scrap it for everyone.

From the BBC website:

He confirmed the cut would hit homes with a single or two high earners. But families with two parents on modest incomes - which might add up to over £44,000 - will keep the benefit.

Yes Stokey. it's based on household income. I can see how you feel but as a single parent I would be seriously pissed off if married couples with a SAHP still got it and I didn@t qualify

And it was my understanding too that it would cost more to administer than to means test. Didn't realise that about the NI contributions. That's insane, surely they can't be planning on cutting those out too?

It's affecting a small proportion of middle earners where one person has gotten off their backside and got a good job and managed to break the 40% tax band.

Will not really affect anyone earning a lot or anyone earning under 44K.

osbourne, osbourne child benefit snatcher !!!

i am going to have to work on that chant.

he is a sneaky little nob. how on earth are they going to claw it back through tax, they will make so many mistakes and piss everyone off.

Is the gap between £37k and £44k personal tax allowance? I think tax bands are phrased as you go into the 40% once you earn X over your personal allowance so a person earning £44k is earning £37k over their personal allowance of £7k. In which case personal allowance is going up by about £500-£1000 iirc.

I don't know Riven. Basically on BBC news Sian said so people on £37,000 (the current 40% rate) and the devil said "well by then £44,000" or something like that, then after he'd gone to drink some blood the business journo made the assumption that he is basing it inflation and otherstuff.

He said on R4 that it could be clawed back through the tax system but he wanted us to do the "right thing - and stop claiming". Which does kind of presuppose that the NI element will be lost.

Cos bringing up the next generation isn't worth it, presumably!

Just heard on BBC that it's not based on joint income

My gut feeling is that the cost of means testing it will be almost as much as they save. It is a political thing - and will actually make very little difference to budget deficits.

I wonder if child support from a separated parent counts as household income, it no longer does for benefits.

Women! Know your place.

Low blow, George. Really Bad Form.

Will cost us £150/month, DH is just in higher bracket but we live in SE, it's a huge chunk out of our finances

Currently you need to earn £43,875 to be paying higher rate tax. The tax allowance of £6,475 has stayed the same for the past two years. But I do remember before the election that there were thoughts about it going up to £10,000 weren't there?

Having just seen someone say that two income families earning over the threshold would keep it then it looks like I need to earn a bit more money if DH does get into the higher rate tax band by 2013, which seems likely. Seems ridiculous that if he earned an extra £500 gross that we would be £1,820 ish net worse off a year. Am almost tempted to have an this morning.

"He confirmed the cut would hit homes with a single or two high earners. But families with two parents on modest incomes - which might add up to over £44,000 - will keep the benefit."

BBC

the £44000 is the 6475 tax free allowance plus the £37400 basic rate band - ie higher rate tax starts when someone earns just short of £44K.

I hope if he is cutting this he cuts the winter fuel allowance for rich pensioners.

Just heard on R4 - if one person is a HR taxpayer they need to tick a box on the tax return to say so, and it will be claimed back via PAYE, or tax payments. But he wants us to do the decent thing and stop claiming. Thanks then. So, dh earns a 'fortune' by some standards, but we also have credit card and mortgage debt, childcare costs etc. If dh and I both earned the same amount together (say two wages of £30,000) we would keep it? Real incentive to work hard and achieve something with your life then isn't it? Will never vote conservative ever.

It's always been the way that if you earn just over the threshold it doesn't make much difference to your income. So as ever, the medium incomed will be disproportionately hit

Pathetic. And totally unworkable if to be based on household income and some sort of 'notional' higher rate tax payment based on joint salary - notional as in a couple don't actually pay higher rate tax but would if salary were paid to one person iyswim. And totally unfair if it's not based on household income...

It preys on the idea that anyone who pays higher rate tax is 'loaded'. My sister will lose about 1900 a year (and remember this is a NET payment). Her DH works and just about tips in to the higher tax bracket so he may as well go in to his boss today and reduce his hours to - what would it be, 4 days a week? Add to that what he would save by not travelling one day a week and voila - it pays not to work yet again.

Don't recall this being in the manifesto pre-election.... write to your MP now

Am absolutely at this. I earn quite a bit less than HRT threshold and DH is currently over HRT threshold - by about £100 per year! So basically because of that we will lose £1742 per year which is what we currently get in CB. How can that possibly be fair in any way. That amount covers the cost of DDs before and after school care. We will have to seriously consider DH going to something like 98% of full time to avoid this which will have knock on consequences for pensions etc but there is no way we can afford to lose that much. Surely this is a prime target for a MN Campaign??

Can feel the steam coming out of my ears! No point in me working if we lose benefit. By the time I've paid out for petrol etc to get to work, will be better off staying at home. Grrrr!

Feel like handing my notice in now or just saying to my boss 'don't worry about paying me - I'm here because I love it!'. I'd end up better off!!

Ridiculous!

'Riven, the tax band limit rises every year with inflation anyway, so he is just assuming that's what it'll be by 2013.' No it doesn't; it's been frozen for the last three years. That's why more people paid 40% under Labour, because they altered neither the tax free allowance nor the threshold.

There'll be more ITRs to be completed then as they stopped sending HR taxpayers on PAYE with simple tax affairs a return about 4 years ago.

According to itv you could both earn 43k and keep it

Between losing Child Benefit and Tax Credits from next year we are going to lose jsut over £300 a month.

This is a substantial amount of money, luckily DP is not in the public sector and may actually get a wage increase next year (that's if he keeps his job).

Oh and remember the VAT increase is coming as well.

What the bastard should have done is crack down on tax avoidance.

I don't understand, on HM revenues website (and on BBC news) it says £37,400 but it's really £44,000??

I think we need someone who earns say £40,000 to come and tell us their tax band!?!

Either way they are fuckers.

MegBusset, we are the same. We live in London and we have big outgoings and this is going to make a massive difference to us. When I return to work next year it's going to cost me with childcare costs until we qualify for 15 hours childcare... which I am hoping remains unchanged.

Does anyone here think it's a good idea??

How about a mn webchat with GO next , lol . He'll get lynched !!!

Well it certainly show's how this coalition government value children.

Winter fuel payments, free TV licences and free travel for elderly people is not means tested (in fact some MPs and Lords will qualify) yet a family earning in the early £40,000s get child benefit taken away - shame.

Also, very much based on the understanding that families share income equally and anyone who reads through some of the threads on here will know that this is not the case.

The £37000 ish is taxable income. You get £6,475 personal allowance so you need to earn a bit over £44,000 to pay hr tax. Will come back to this but need to take children to school

"Currently you need to earn £43,875 to be paying higher rate tax. The tax allowance of £6,475 has stayed the same for the past two years. But I do remember before the election that there were thoughts about it going up to £10,000 weren't there?"

There were discussions about if you earnt less than X then your tax allowance would go up to Y.

You get your tax allowance free of tax.

Then you pay 20% tax on earned income up to £37,400
40% on £37,401 to £150,000
50% on £150,001+

Hope that helps. The £44,000 figure is the basic rate upper limit plus the tax free allowance.

I may well, if we are still here switch to claiming Belgian child benefit, from 2013.

There's a thought - can they do this under European law?

That HRP change was by stealth though, wasn't aware of that . Although I don't understand why the age criteria doesn't tie in with the Income Support/JSA changes for Lone Parents. Surely all women should be encouraged back to work equally

This sounds like an excellent idea in principle - though I am concerned about the obvious unfairness that a double-income household on £80k could still get CB and a single-income household on £50k might not.

I am guessing the cost of means-testing, rectifying and dealing with errors, etc, makes it impossible to do the calculation using total household income.

It's also shows how politically courageous the Chancellor is being - truly putting country above party. He is hitting traditionally Tory voters in order to help the poorest and most deprived via Iain Duncan Smith's welfare reforms.

Sorry if I confused everyone by saying £37,400 I did'nt know that you added personal allowance on top of that.

So basically as the personal allowance goes up, the 40% band goes up?

Actually I blame the bbc news for my mistake!!

I feel sick about this. We are going to be massively hit - we will lose £250 a month.

What is SO unfair is that a family can be earning about 40k (atm) and lose it (not going to speculate about what higher rate may or may not be, it could be LOWER if they want to raise revenue). But a family earning 70k (or a bit more) will KEEP it, because they are dual income.

SO SO SO unfair.

ids reforms will cost more to implement than they will save in housing benefit. it makes no sense atm to do this

The HRP stuff had been around on websites for about 6 months before the change happened. Some have special dispensations from this (note to self must sort out form for this) - ie. Forces wives abroad, as we can't work to make up our NI if we follow our husbands abroad.

Why is the up to £37k confusing Riven? You get approx £6400 tax free, then up to £37,400 at 20%, then 40% on income above that to £150,000, then 50% thereafter, so if you earned £150,000 you will have three rates of tax, and I think a withdrawal of the personal allowance.

I thought that MN was very lefty and believed in taxing the rich to help the poor. Why are HIGHER RATE TAXPAYERS shouting "not fair"? These people are earning 75% more than average wage, they are hardly on their uppers.
If Gordon Brown had proposed this you would all be cheering his socialist principles.

As a 'tory mumsnetter'... already a few quid down on the new CTC thresholds and now losing the CB in 2013 - being totally selfish I can say I'll miss the £120/month and I'd rather it wasn't happening. However, I will say that I'm not surprised that it's happening because paying £20/week to everyone regardless of income wasn't 'fair' by anyone's standards. There were also some pointers that it was on the cards when CB was frozen in the budget. I have long predicted that CB would be done away with entirelyand an income-related CTC (or the Universal Benefit or whatever we get) would take over. Meaning that low-income families get help and high-income families don't... which is fair

We've got a couple of years to adjust to our new disposable income levels and cut our cloth accordingly. At least we still have incomes... some at the end of this process won't even have that.

So I've just worked out if my DH drops to 4.5 days we roughly work out better off! Poor bloke married me last year took on and is fantastic with my 2 DS (elder is autistic so no easy ride) we've lost maintenance from their natural father because of his job situation now I'm pregnant with no.3 and we're to loose child benefit x 3 on top of maintenance x 2 and tax credit. We're not rolling in it, the morgage was manageable on our previous income but now I'm at a loss and emotional enough as it is. DS1's challenging behaviour means childcare is not an option and its not practical for me to work - I had to give up my own business that I thought was flexible enough because of all the specialist appointments (physio, psychiatrists, occupational therapy, speech therapy, language /social therapy) and forever being called into school because of incidents. The local nursery were very good but didn't feel they could handle him under normal supervision rates.

Why have they decided that this is such a definitive cut off point for everything?

I think having George Osbourne here for a live chat would be great fun. Can we? Please?

Someone on R4 said why should the mc be paid to have children.

They should go further, why should anyone be paid to have children

and according to this he is reducing the HRT threshold by £2,500 next year!!

They said when they announced the gradual rise of personal allowance to £10k they would lower the HRT threshold so only those in the basic band would benefit.

the reason it's unfair fembear is because there is a 'hole' in the middle. So you can earn less than it or more than it (up to a point), but lots of people will fall RIGHT INTO IT. And so people who are far far better off will retain the child benefit, but people who can barely afford to lose it will have it snatched away.

If you have a household income of 40k, despite it being above average salary, for a household you are BELOW AVERAGE earnings, because average salary is about 22k, and in order for that to BE the average, you assume a household has a dual income - you assume the average salary is applied to all adults.

This is really very poorly thought out. A family with one person earning £45K will receive no child benefit but a family with an evenly split joint income of £86K will still receive it. The family with the joint income of £86K could also additionally receive maintenance from an absent parent if they have children from a previous relationship.
They are going to do it this way so that they save administration costs but it leaves some very unfair anomalies.

Librashavinganotherbiscuit - thank you for the concrete example.

So many of our friends are on dual incomes and don't understand WHY we are not better off on just my DH's salary. They all seem to have a LOT more spending money than us each month...

We are absolutely screwed.

The CB keeps us in the black each month - growing family (hopefully arriving in January) and looking forward to Public Sector worker pay cuts....plus HUGE fixed rate mortgage...

Success has never paid so badly.

Honestly we would be better off getting a divorce and me (a husband dependant) signing up for income support.

Why bother?

I would LOVE to be able to give my husband my personal tax allowance so he could earn £12,00 (or there abouts) before getting on the tax ladder. That would MORE than make up for the CB - as I and the kids are completely dependant on him it seems fair.

Reason I gave up FT work was the crippling child care costs that (because of our dual income) we never got any help with anyway.

Thank you government for being so supportive of families.

I feel like I've woken up into a nightmare....

FFS

Yes, fembear, this is a very redistributive change (I refuse the use the word "progressive" to mean redistributive).

This change will hit the relatively rich in order to help the very poor. I would have thought the Mumsnet/Guardian nexus would be delighted.

It turns out that, far from enjoying paying their taxes, MNers want other people to lose out, just like everyone else.

In the interview on Radio 4 Geo. Osborne said that that the average salary of a higher rate taxpayer was £70,000 (so it's all right then..........)

What sort of average is this? From my maths of long ago I know that you have the mode the median and the mean. With income, the mean which is the most common;y used 'average' can be skewed by huge incomes at the higher end. I don't know the stats on this but my gut feeling is that there will be a lot of people on £44,000 - £50,000.

I will start my post by saying that I am not a Tory mumsnetter!

If - and I emphasis the 'IF' - this is part of a wider package of cuts that involve a wide sector of society 'taking the pain', then I suppose I can see the logic behind it. It will hit us (although less then some as we only have one child.)

There has to be some method of bringing down the deficit. It is going to be grim, and it is unlikely that there will be a single household that does not see their income cut in some way. I am public sector worker, and will almost certainly be made redundant within the next 6 months (we have been told our office is closing, but not actually been told when.)

fembear rightly or wrongly I can't help feeling that if my DH earned an extra £75 a year gross (which would take him into the higher rate tax band) that if that meant losing child benefit of £33.70 a week (net) meaning a loss of more than £1,750 that it feels a little unfair somehow. Especially if people could earn more in total and not lose it.

I do realise that there needs to be a cut off point somewhere. But annoying little quotes like "we're all in this together" are not helpful.

Am interested in the admin costs there will be for this and what the total proposed savings are.

If he says "we are all in this together" once more I may actually vomit

I don't begrudge tax. Hospitals, nhs, schools, housing -great. The principle of this grates, yes.

We live in the S.E. We'll lose about £150 a month. That's a HUGE deal to us.

"I thought that MN was very lefty and believed in taxing the rich to help the poor"

earning £44k with kids, mortgage etc is not rich is it?

i agree it will be a nightmare to implement but at the same time i think that universal benefits while being good in terms of higher take-up and lower admin costs, cannot really be defended in a time of such serious cuts.

i don't actually agree with a lot of the cuts but if you're going to go around closing museums and libraries, laying off huge numbers of public sector workers, reducing police staff etc... then you cannot justify paying CB and other benefits universally. You just can't.

[p.s. and i say that as somebody who will lose out if we ever do conceive as DH is a higher rate payer (just) while i am not near it]

tax payers have paid their taxes so why should they lose getting some of this tax back for their family? Seems unfair to those in work.

This is only the start! This government has been talking about cuts for months now, and cuts don't just affect other people.

DH HAS to have a company car for work, this is included as part of his income, and pushed him over the threshold. I lost my job last year, the CB is NEEDED, I don't get any other benefits

The only comfort is that its not till 2013, so we get a couple of years to get used to the idea .

Anyone else considering writing to their MP about it?

Taxing rich to help the poor - yes, well that's all fine. But this is not about that - it is all about bailing out the banks and maintaining the ruling class status quo. Why do we have to keep on paying to keep global capitalism alive and f**king us over?

Is this not regressive taxation by stealth? The minute (or pound!) you are into the higher band you lose everything?

So the 50% tax payer loses the same amount but hugely differnt proportion than the £44,000 tax payer.

"earning £44k with kids, mortgage etc is not rich is it?"

Ha ha. And MN goes on about Cameron and Osborne not living in the real world ...

yes we need cuts but we need an economy ffs. people need money in their pockets or else the small amount of home grown industry will go to the wall.

what will we be left with in 5 years? alot of folk on the bread line and no enterprise. if you cut the public sector you need to stimulate the economy somehow. the royal bank in edinburgh is slashing jobs despite making a profit this year, they are outsourcing their it to india. this is happening all over. small businesses are going to the wall as everyone tightens their belts and shops at aldi and the rest. this country is going to have nothing left to fall back on. [gloomy]

44k for a family is below average income. He is taking it from families below average income and continuing to give it to families that earn nearly double that.

Thinking more about this I can't see how it is workable. What would happen if someone was just below the HRT threshold at the start of the year and so claimed/recieved CB for 11 months then in month 12 got a promotion that meant that the final month's pay pushed them into the HRT band - would they be asked to pay back all of the CB they had received that year? Or in a family with children which separates or gets married within a particular year. Surely this hasn't been though through properly and the admin costs will be huge.

I would LOVE to know how the multi millionaires Osbourne and Cameron are "in this together" with the rest of us plebs. WHat pain are they feeling I wonder.

I'm a well-off higher rate tax-payer, and can understand that it isn't very fair for me to continue receiving child benefit; think that I'm in a different position to those earning just over the threshold, however.

What I am curious about is the concept of families and household here; does the ruling only impact those who are married, or does it look beyond this to all partnerships and households?

And if it does look beyond the legal status for this purpose, why couldn't it for other taxes such as inheritance tax, where unmarried partners get walloped for tax?

why not put a huge tax on booze & fags?

Is average income per person £23k, or average per family?

(I'm going to stick up for benefits for elderly people by pointing that things like winter fuel allowance are automatic because the elderly have a lot more trouble applying for benefit and means testing would mean a lot more of them dying in winter.
Having said that I do take the point that lords and MPs clearly don't need a free bus pass so there should at least be an easier opt-out system.
Despite all the fuss about benefit fraud I do believe there are many who would be honest about it when they'll really never need it.)

This may not affect me for a long time as a single mum, maybe even never (as I'm not holding my breath for a suitable and well paid job with my disabilities and caring responsibilities) but I would very possibly be financially penalised for moving in with, marrying and starting a family with DP (which I thought was what the Tories would want - silly me!) if he even had a hint of career success after graduating in this climate.

We are being attacked.
Hardly a week seems to go by without some tripe in the media such as how all mums do all day is yak away on the net - this move to take away our "pin money" won't be met with much resistance

In reality, for any main carer with a child, it will effectively take away their basic financial independence.
Child Benefit can be a lifesaver for those in domestic violence situations.
It doesn't even bear thinking about.

How can we fight back?

I agree with doing this in principle, but obviously we will feel the loss of income like anyone else.

I agree with longfingernails that the idea that a dual income household on £80k could keep the benefit while we as a single income household will loose it doesn't sit well at all. Especially as that dual income household will already be paying significantly less tax than a single income household on the same gross salary.

More argument than ever to move to a single tax code for a household rather than taxing people as individuals.

Why should anyone be entitled to cb? regardless of income. If the the economy can't sustain it - Scrap it.

I would like to see the sums though, as usually universal benefits are very cheap to administer and means testing is expensive. On the other hand, the family I know with four children all in private schools, a £3million house and fabulous income gets 4xchild benefit, which does seem wrong.

It will be interesting to see how this works in practice. I already feel clobbered compared to my same earning colleagues who have SAHWs and therefore don't have any childcare costs. I am beginning to understand why some single parents think it is better to stay at home withe their children and claim benefits.

So, dh earns over the threshold, and I earn very little. We will lose CB.

Yet, another household with two people earning the same as us, but distributed differently, will not lose.

That is inherently UNFAIR.

I agree with others who say that universal benefits can't continue, but I want this to be done fairly!

It will not really bother us but TBH if the CB goes but I am beginnng to get the feeling that he 'cuts' are going to be implemented in a piecemeal way with bits nibbeled off here rather than a really coherent strategy of reforming tax and benefits.

This is going to be a massive missed opportunity and just waste a lot of political capital.

Yes that's right just because I'm angry about them taking away CB from HRT payers it must automatically mean I'm not angry about the poorest in our country having cuts.

It's quite easy to be angry about both.

Mumi It's trivial for a pensioner to "opt-out" of paying for buses and trains.

They can just buy a ticket, like everyone else.

The trouble is, why would you? It's not rational. Why pay more to the train companies, or in tax, if you don't have to?

I know I'm just repeating what everyone else is saying but,

So a dual earning family earning £80k keep it, a single earning family earning £45k, don't?

They will make a simple benefit expensive and open to abuse

What about the NI contribution aspect of it?

The man is a bigger idiot than he looks.

Actually, when I think about it, perhaps it is the the NI contribution is where the real money is going to be saved. I don't know how much it costs, but I bet it is a huge hidden cost of the benefit.

swallowedAfly that's my thought (wish I earned £80,000!). I'm just into the 40% bracket so will be adversely affected but will now have no relief for childcare costs at all.

MaryBS - yes, I am planning to write to my MP and to GO and suggest that everyone else who thinks this is unfair does the same. While I absolutely agree that there needs to be cuts to get the country out of the mess it is in I just can't see this as fair. There must be some way of taking disposable income or at least childcare costs into account in all of this. On the face of it our joint income after tax is fairly rosy, but when you take off the over £600 a month that we currently pay for childcare (and the £870 we pay for the mortgage (on our not very exciting 3 bedroom house)) then actually our disposable income is probably less than for some families where the notional income is much less. I worked out recently that even if we sold our house and moved into rented accomodation we still couldn't survive on just DHs salary (just within the HRT band as it is) as we wouldn't get any CTC. That can't be fair either. There are people in this country not paying their fair share and it's not the middle income families that this will hit.

I have had a feeling that this was on the cards for a while now.

Probably in the end it makes sense but it does feel like middle class exclusion. All we are allowed to do in this society is pay for everything. Once this goes through I can see that the middle classes are going to become a lot more hard-nosed about benefits for others.

Well the tories have never been known for their love of single parents, I remember being a kid to a single mother in the eighties, we were classed as the SCUM of the earth.

Sad to see how difficult this will be for so many.

But as a Labour-voting higher rate tax paypayer (both me and my husband) I have to say I think for me at least stopping universal CB is only fair. I earn well over the threshhold they are talking about and it seems wrong that I receive over £40 a week tax free at a time when vital services are being cut, disability benefits slashed etc etc. I've had my share of financial pain with massive increases in my tax bill imposed by that awful Gordon Brown so of course I'd rather not lose CB (and I always rather liked the fact the State was prepared to do something for me purely because I had children) but I really couldn't look many Mumsnetters in the eye and say I personally should still get CB. After a year or so on here I often find myself thinking about government cuts in terms of 'what would this do to Riven and people like her?' so if this means she gets a bit more support because I lose out am cool with that.

I do hope however they will refine their thinking to make this more equitable - sounds like early thinking is a bit muddled.

It looks like CB will still be paid to the person claiming it for the child but it will be taken back in tax from the HRT payer.

This seems a small point but means that:

*it is possible that CB will be taken back proportional to the amount into that band the HRT payer is, up to the full CB amount.

*That the main carer will still get the money in their hand in the case of relationships where the money is not regarded as 'ours'.

*HRP can still be applied to a non-working parent claiming the CB.

Yes Riven - think about it. An average is calculated by taking the total amount of salary divided by the number of people. So you can then assume that every person earns the average salary. So in a household with TWO people, you can assume they have 2x the average salary, ie 46k (and remember the 44k figure is George Osbourne speculating, atm the threshold is lower than that, which magnifies the discrepancy).

The household with a single income of 40k is ALREADY hit for more tax than a household with a dual income of 2x 20k.

LostArt that seems to be how it will work. As a single parent on a reasonably good income I may be better off cutting my hours and claiming benefits. Surely that isn't what a Tory government would want me to do? very

Well, you can justify paying CB universally if the overall cost is less than means-testing it, which is what we've always been told before. Now they are getting round that by having a cheaper box-ticking exercise rather than proper means testing. This means that some families with a family income of £80K will still get child benefit, whereas other families with a family income of £45K won't. And we are supposed to be happy because this is redistributing money from rich to poor? Hmm.

And there's the NI thing which I doubt he's even thought about (it's the bit I'm most worried about, though -- I will probably give up work when we have DC3 because of childcare costs, and was happy that my NI contributions would be covered until DC3 got to 12. Now, apparently, because DH earns over the HRT threshold I (who never have) will wind up with a big hole in my NI contributions. Marvellous. )

I know that this is terrible news for some but I agree with it in principle.
The idea is right the threshold is wrong imo

Of course a two income household has two lots of personal allowance but not necessarily double the expenditure of a single income household.

yy to National INsurance payments

I am not happy about this at all. My husband earns more than the £44,000 a year and I am a SAHM. The thing I don't get is how can he justify stopping it for 1 person earning it but 2 peole earning just under the band could make thousands more and still get it. It is absurd. If they are going to do it then they must stop joint incomes earning more than the £44,0000 as well.

Why not pay it to families where someone has worked/or is working & paid tax.

But it is not the poor who will benefit - everyone is being slashed. Look at Local Housing Allowance. Look at cutting Sure Start centres. Look at schools, youth clubs, domestic violence units, arts groups. etc etc. Don't present this as redistribution. It is definitely not. It is Tory cuts as we have always known them.

HRP = NI. It does look like HRP/NI could still be secured for a non-working/low income parent with a higher income partner.

MuminBeds that is a little better..I guess.

So the HRT payer will have to state that someone in the household recieves CB for x amount of children and then it will be taken from their salary?

Its madness that a couple who both earn but just below the higher rate tax band and have say a combined income of £75k will still get CB but where one person in a couple earn say £45k then they will lose CB. The couple who work also get two tax free personal allowances and lower rate tax bands as well.

This really has not been thought out. What a mess. It is going to hit lower middle income Tory swing voters hard. The politics and the economics of this is all wrong.

My husband has said that his NI contributions will pay for my state pension anyway although he is 100% certain. He gets £52,000 a year

Anyone know if this is true?

GO said the higher rate tax payer would you to 'tick a box' to say the household cliamed CB.

Radio 4 asked 'So it's an hoesty box?'

GO- 'Oh, but we will be able to cross check.'

Really? The adimin for means testing would be expensive but this 'cross-checking' will not be cheap either. If they are to get it right...........

telsa I am guessing this isn't for deficit reduction - this is to help fund the Iain Duncan Smith welfare reforms - which genuinely aim to help those who have been out of work longest. Although you might quibble with the implementation details of the universal credit, I don't think there is anyone who doesn't believe that Iain Duncan Smith is absolutely genuine about trying to help.

And in any case, they aren't Tory cuts - they are Labour cuts. They aren't "Tory cuts" till they pass the Darling 20% number - we are still a long, long way off. The Osborne cuts are the extra 5% which take them to 25%.

Honesty box.

That is good that the NI aspect will be retained - that would have been the biggest loss in terms of lost pension.

I would love to know how much the govt are actually going to save by moving from universal CB to means tested to CB, it's going to be peanuts.

Conkie - I think pensions are now independent as well. I was always cross that I could claim mine at 60 (before the rules changed) for three weeks before dh turned 65 and then I'd lose all my entitlement to pension based on my NICs as my pension was dependent upon him.

Now I have to have 30 years contribution to get full pension, and when I asked I was told my pension would be based on my contributions, nothing to do with his any more. May be worth ringing and asking?

conkie your husband is wrong.

Does make me wonder about working. I work full time and have stonkingly high childcare costs as I need to cover both ends of the day plus holidays (5 weeks doesn't go far by the time I've taken half days off to attend school functions - no one to share the attendance so am adversely affected by that too).

Have to say if the government extended parental leave beyond 5 yrs of age I'd be tempted to add on a couple of weeks unpaid leave every year to bring me under the HRT bracket.

That actual loss of CB adds up to £1,040 which of course is tax free. It helps me pay for things for ds that I might otherwise not be able to afford. That combined with the increased NI means I'm actually have a lower household income than I had 5 years ago.

'I don't think there is anyone who doesn't believe that Iain Duncan Smith is absolutely genuine about trying to help.'
I, for one, don't believe that the millionaire IDS is genuinely trying to help - if he ere, he wouldn't be a Tory capitalist.

riven - that's the point, it isn't means tested. It is a crude cut off that ignores the fact that a family can have TWO incomes or ONE, and treating them the same.

Did you see the point about the average incomes earlier?

ouch

Where are you supposed to tick this box? I don't get a tax return. Will they be sending out a separate form? Doubly

"It's madness that a couple who both earn but just below the higher rate tax band and have say a combined income of £75k will still get CB but where one person in a couple earn say £45k then they will lose CB."

I'm not so sure about that. I would quite like a world that encouraged men and women to earn equal amounts instead of him being The WageEarner and the little woman being stuck at home in her pinny.

The mad thing about this is that CB is a Universal Benefit everyone gets without means testing. The Coalition have been talking about implementing a Universal Benefit for years and IDS is pushing hard to get it done but now Osborne goes and takes away a well accepted and supported Universal Benefit in the form of CB.

What SuzieHomemaker said about the middle class being a lot more hard nosed about people on benefits after this is dead right. That is exactly what will happen.

Implementing a proper Universal Benefit system supported by the entire population would have created a popular and well supported revolution in this country and we seem to be going in exactly the opposite direction.

I hope David Cameron gets involved and bangs some heads together. This sounds like Treasury making policy on the fly without thinking about the impact across other departments. It is not about the level of benefits (I am happy enough to lose CB) but its the confused set of principles that bother me.

This YouTube clip made me smile before the election but it all seems a bit scarily accurate now:

Common People.

Warning for those with dc about - contains swearing!

I wonder if they will then allow the SAH partner to transfer their tax free allowance to the working partner, if they are basing this on household income to make it fairer.

They don't (in theory) know my household income, as we are taxed separately.

R5Live said it was where anyone in the household earned over £44,000 so if you have two people earning £40,000 each they would still be entitled to claim CB. Really doesn't add up at all. If it isn't done on household income then all it is doing is pandering to the Tory/Lib Dem vote imo.

Child benifit was always about the child not the parents - the tory goveremtn hae just abolished chidl benifit and made it parent benifit for those parents earning under £44k

BYE bye child benifit and hello parnets benifit on chidlren

IDShas been working and co-authoring books with Graham Allen, Labour MP for one of the most deprived constituencies in the UK. Basically his ideas are all around early intervention, and restructuring the system to allow more money and support to be put into helping the most dyfunctional and chaotic households to stop the children of these households going on to be offenders/addicts/long term unemployed and hence being a burden on the state (and obviously ruining their lives..) There is a LOT more to it than that, but the Centre for Social Justice website contains much of their thinking.

Yes, IDS is rich - but I don't think his proposed reforms are just bout protecting the wealthy.

this suggests average mean earnings £489/wk in 2009 489x52=£25,428 or an average household income assuming two working parents of £50,856.

So this is talking of taking a benefit from below average earning households?

"I'm not so sure about that. I would quite like a world that encouraged men and women to earn equal amounts instead of him being The WageEarner and the little woman being stuck at home in her pinny."

oh for FFS it's not being stuck at home in her pinny it's being at home raising children (p.s I know WOHM raise their children as well, I am just trying to say we are not stuck at home twiddling our thumbs whilst wearing our pinnys). I am quite capable of earning more than my DH but we have taken the decision that I look after the children during the day. It's a VALID choice.

I'm sure there must be a simpler way of cutting money if you are going to change the child benefit system. Why not say that from 2013 child benefit will only be paid for the first 3 children? This would make it easier for people to plan families and if you already have more children than that, by 2013, the youngest existing child would be benefitting from free nursery places, or stopping child benefit at 11 or something? Surely then it would still be a universal cut off point and much easier to administer. I thought it was fair enough before but didnt take into account that single parent families where the parent is a higher rate tax payer would be hit several times. I don't know if working single parets get any help other than the usual.

I am concerned that the child benefit - link to womens NI & pension will be lost in all of this, for a lot of women.

That was only implemented a few years ago and was a really good thing - that women were no longer being financially penalised for taking time out of paid employment to raise their children. Women still have massively lower pensions than men on average due to the time out and the gender pay gap etc blah blah, this was one tiny step to do something about it. And what's the betting they "forget" to put anything in place to replace it

I also don't see how means testing / box ticking and checking or however you'e going to do it will be cheaper than universal.

"489x52=£25,428 or an average household income assuming two working parents of £50,856.

So this is talking of taking a benefit from below average earning households?"

Absolutely, but you missed the crucial bit, it's taking a benefit from below average earning households 489x52=£25,428 or an average household income assuming two working parents of £50,856.

So this is talking of taking a benefit from below average earning households WHILST CONTINUING TO PAY IT TO HOUSEHOLD THAT EARN NEARLY DOUBLE THAT. That's the killer.

So, what if your husband earns £40,000 now-is that not in the 40% tax bracket?

telsa Well, the IDS proposals aren't that different to many other Labour MPs.

Are they all evil too?

I can see that this way of implementing it is unfair to a family with 1 income of £50k, whose neighbours each earn 30k. However, at least this means it doesn't have to be means tested and therefore cost so much to run that it end sup not saving money.

We'll lose it, but have non-essentials we spend money on, so I guess can afford to. I don't want the UK to end up like Ireland, with all the extra difficulties that would entail.

So it sounds like - I can claim it, still get the NI protection, then DH in his tax return will need to say that I've claimed it, and pay it back. Is that right?

Oh yes, the oh so progressive Centre for Social Justice. EG:
'In December 2008 Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice argued for end of any obligation to provide council housing, to encourage private landlordism. This was followed by a report 'Principles for Social Housing Reform', from Localis, coauthored by Cllr Stephen Greenhalgh, recommending councils should “exploit [the] huge reserve of capital value” in their houses and the land by selling it off and charging “market terms”.' Etc etc.

this is ridiculous! I don't have a problem with means testing it but do it properly or not at all.

Although...for single income families, could the earning partner pay the other a wage?

Doesn help single families though

Anyone know what the Tories are planning to do with childcare vouchers? If they go too that'll be another £2k or so lopped off our income.

As I recall Labour were going to phase them out, but the Tories say they'd review this - ?

BeenBeta - this doesn't feel right ideologically. Hopefully some more information will come to light.
Surely if IDS/DC etc are serious about moving towards A Universal Benefit, then what is currently CB would be a part of that?

There isn't much talk about raising the tax threshold to £10k - which will benifit every one that works and earns over the tax threshold now

swallowedafly - i can't believe you posted that.

Like others I am wondering which box on which form will need to be ticked. Not everyone that pays HRT completes a tax return so there will be a cost involved if we are going to return to that system.

Labour? - forget Labour. I am talking revolution......

I thought he said households where one or both are higher rate tax payers (was listening to the interview but haven't seen the detail)

i.e. where one partner, or both partners, earn in the higher rate tax threshold

that wouldn't then catch a family where both parents earned £30k each but would where one partner earned £60k iyswim

I mean when you think about it, it ticks a lot of right-wing boxes

Women back into the home
Women lose pension etc entitlement so dependent on men
Women having to cowtow to male heads of household in order to get money to feed & clothe themselves and children (not all of them obviously! But it happens - many threads on here with men in top bracket and women at home with the children having to run the whole household on CB... really utterly depressing)

All of this is seen from a right wing perspective as "supporting marriage" ie forcing women onto the back foot in relationships. Society is returned to correct order - important men out at work and earning and being powerful and head of the household, women and children at home, with no financial independence, therefore he has power over them. Without independent income or a voice in the "outside world" womens issues are not heard about any more and the world can go on as it's supposed to.

That's traditional/conservative ideology/right wing thinking for you. All of these changes come from a vision of society as some kind of 50s utopia that never existed. To put everything back to "how it should be".

saf - that is not a bad idea. I've long thought that there needed to be a point beyond which families who were entirely and long-term benefit dependant should stop getting additional money for additional children.

longingernails I know a number of those reaching retirement age who do not claim certain benefits (even disability living allowance!) because they feel it should go to those worse off than them.

It's obviously not the solution to everything but if things are as bad as the Tories say, if "we're all in this together" and every penny possible must be saved, why not take advantage of those who would be honest when sent a form saying "you now qualify for this: do you need/want it or not?"

Not means testing is apparently wasting money but OTOH means testing will mean many elderly returning to being needlessly isolated and tens of thousands more dying in the winter.

What other compromise is there?

There are a number of people who have earned a state pension but are far and away comfortable enough not to need one.
I won't post the Niemöller poem! but where will the line be drawn?

Except if you both earn just under cut-off ISNT. A dual income family still gets it where a single male earner would not.

riven you don't need that figure, because the 23k is an average, therefore that calculation is already done. Because a person on 0k has been included in the calculation.

it's a tiny amount Riven. He said they had predicted it would only affect something like 3% of families which seems like a tiny amount (this is from memory from hearing the interview on the bbc when I had just woken up so might be hazy )

I am sure they won't withdraw the home responsibilities protection bit. They haven't said they would I don't think.

Personally...<dons hard hat>...I don't really have a problem with this.

We wouldn't actually lose any CB as I don't work, and DH doesn't earn over the threshold, BUT if we (me, DH and 2 kids under 3) can manage fine on the money we're getting paying a mortgage on an above average priced house in a fairly middle class part of the country, then I don't see why people earning £44k can't.

CB is there to financially help children. It's to help to pay for their clothes, shoes, healthy food etc. It shouldn't be a complete subsisy, and it shouldn't pay for luxuries like foreign holidays or piano lessons.

I'm sure the details about pension contributions and joint incomes/single incomes will be worked out. It's only just been announced, they're not going to have every fine detail worked out yet.

ISN'T - if you read the thread it has been explained that the benefit would still be paid to the mother, and the tax then taken back off the higher earner.
So it isn't going to be women 'cowtowing' and the NI contribution aspect is also going to be protected.

ISNT - agree with that assessment of tory values and found it unbelievable that people were swallowing the pre-election rhetoric.

I imagine lots of Tory/Lib Dem voters are dual income households. I don't mind losing CB if it is done fairly. At the moment it seems I'm being unfairly targetted. If it was on household income it would be fairer.

This has annoyed me so much.

DH is the army and earns just above the 40 per cent tax level. I don't work because a) we have three small children and b) the army moves us every two years making it fairly difficult to find a regular job. Oh, and he goes off to sandy places fairly often
It's so unfair on households like ours.

Plus, as people have said, child benefit is paid to ME to provide for the children - none of us earn anything. And correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't tax credits worked out on the household income, rather than individually?

Bunch of tossers.

If you insist on universality in benefits, then I too would also favour a cutoff after a certain number of children - but I would probably make it three, not two.

Alibaba This cut doesn't disincentivize moving from benefits into low-paid work, which is the problem the IDS reforms are designed to tackle. It does disincentivize moving from a £40k salary to a £50k salary though.

That is a shame.

That's an administrative workaround marsha by the sound of it, rather than something that has been built in deliberately.

Mind you of course what your genuine right-wing thinker wants is benefits abolished full-stop. UK is a pretty socialist country really, so we're lucky that they are fairly limited as the public acts as a balance.

Mind you they're privatising the NHS and no-one seems to be making a fuss

Telsa - So you don't think that supporting families where intergenerational poverty/violence and crime are issues is a good thing?

What would your alternative be?

(BTW - I am not a Tory voter, however given the state of public finances, I just cannot see how we can retain the benefits system as it is. Therefore I support an approach that attempts to support people earlier in life, and carefully incentivises them to remain in work wherever possible. I also support a much harder line to be taken on tax evasion and avoidance.)

Sounds ideal swallowedafly. I am a sahm with a dp earning just over 40k. We are ok financially but we do still rely on cb for our 2 dc. I wanted a third dc but we couldn't afford to. As it is I am struggling to get back to work.

I do understand that a society needs to ensure that children from low income families and those on benefits do not suffer. However, by paying child benefit and indeed tax credit per child lower income families may actually be better off having more children. Yet others are of course worse off. A ceuiling for benefits of maybe 2 or 3 children may be better.

I also wonder how many self employed people drawing a salary from their besinees will now employ their dp.

Also it does seem another way of discouraging sahp. Surely being a sahp and being supported by your partner is better than having to return to work and potentially taking jobs away from those on benefits.

Naetha - I presume you get other benefits (tax credits) too? A lot of higher rate tax payers don't so losing CB can make a huge difference.

Ali does that mean I'd still get CB and then it would be clawed back in tax? Seems a pointless waste of administrative resources.

"Anyone know what the Tories are planning to do with childcare vouchers? If they go too that'll be another £2k or so lopped off our income"

this would seriously effect me.

Even earning around £45,000 together me and my DH would never be able to afford to have 2 children now so this isn't about people on benefits being encouraged not to have children they can't afford. People on benefits will still have children.

If you are in a dual income household, you are paying a ridiculous amount in childcare costs- if you are in a single income, two person household, you are not. I don't think the argument that 2 parents earning jointly over 40k don't lose money but one partner earning over 40k do is valid for that reason.

I really don't understand why there is no cut off point on the amount of children for child benefit purposes. We are hardly underpopulated as a country! It's ridiculous that I have not heard any politician questioned on it, or even raise it! Its seems so blindingly obvious and would solve so many more problems than it would create, I'm thinking there is something I'm missing.

Manicmonday. I was thinking that too about small business owners cutting their own salaries and paying a salary to their partner.

" if you read the thread it has been explained that the benefit would still be paid to the mother, and the tax then taken back off the higher earner. "

But it also implies that the HRT is to tick a box, a lot of HRT don't fill in self-assesment forms, this will create MORE paperwork and therefore cost more to administrate.

How much is this cutting of universal benefit ACTUALLY going to save?

if you together earn £45k, you won't be hit by this unless one of you earns in a higher rate tax bracket

the people it will hit the most are single parents who still only have one salary and have to pay childcare (i.e. don't have a SAHP looking after the children). In terms of families, it's a fair way of doing it (looking at the higher rate taxpayer rather than joint income) but that doesn't help single parents at all.

You're not necessarily paying out anything in childcare costs as a dual income household if your children are at school.

sorry 2 parents families I meant

think George Osbourne said it would save £1bn (drop in the ocean)

It's not going to help the poor though is it? The poor are still getting hit as well!

What he has done is make it very simple, use the tax codes and brackets, make it look like he is taking it off the rich (higher earners etc) whilst targetting women and single parents.

For our family without doing the sums carefully it would be better if DP dropped a day of work and I go out to work that day, even if I earned a fraction of what he could for that day, his tax bracket would go down, we would still get 3K a year child benefit and I would be able to earn 6K tax free.

I have already been told well it's my fault for DP earning too much! We earn about the same as this person but she also works part time and has free childcare.

"George Osbourne said it would save £1bn"

hmm but politicians are not known for telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It might SAVE £1bn, but out of that £1bn how much is it going to cost to administrate.

Mollie - that is how it seems, crazy I agree.

It looks as if they will be having to send out tax returns to all HRT payers as standard, which will add cost.

As Scootergrrrl says, once your kids are at secondary for example, the childcare element will disappear, as they can get themselves to school and home again.

I don't know many who aren't scooter. We still pay the same as we did when they were babies. Some people don't pay any childcare at all when both partners work as they have family who step in so it's impossible to break it down to that level really.

bollocks why would this happen today, I'm suppose to be doing housework. In my frilly pinny.

Having recently moved to an area where you only qualify for 15 hours a week at age 3 if your child goes to the local pre-school, we have had to put both DC in a private nursery as we couldn't find any help for the pick up, drop off, holidays etc meaning that we lost about £1500 towards out annual childcare costs (running at £1200 per month). Under the proposal for CB, we lose that as well.

I know some people think we don't deserve it as our earnings are above the limit but without it there is no point in me going to work. Our child care costs are not taking into account AT ALL.

It has been a struggle losing the assisted nursery place funding but without CB it is not worth me working at all. Result of this - less tax & NI going into the system.

I think these proposals will drive more and more people to not RTW after maternity as they will be no better off having spent all those hours at work and away from DC.

When kids are in school and no longer require child care, I can accept that maybe my situation re CB should be reviewed. At the moment it is the only thing keeping me in work!

I'm sure there are many other people in the same boat. We pay more in tax & NI than we get out of the system in tax, NI (as well as stimulating the economy by paying for child care). All that money will be lost if we all give up work. Net result - cost of this being more than the benefit!

Presumably if you have two modest earners in a household, whose gross salary adds up to a little more than £22k, they are having to pay a lot out in childcare to enable the second earner to work. However if your main or sole earner is bringing in £44k, you're either better able to afford childcare or you don't need to pay for it as one of you is a SAHP.

Not that I support these destructive cuts in the first place, but if it has to happen, this way sort of seems to make sense to me (however I'm saying that as part of a family that brings home £37k between us).

You know lately it seems more and more that the powers that be are trying to drag everybody down to a lower level instead of raising more people up.

You work hard, get yourself an education, ok job, so you are not a burden on anyone but you still struggle every month to make ends meet in spite of living modestly. Surely the whole point of trying to earn a higher wage is so that you can support your family better, give them a better standard of living? Where is the incentive to get a better job, better education if you are worse off?

It really rankles that the system is so unfair and yet again it is the paye workers who are hit, whilst those who can play the system through creative accounting/cash in hand work get off scott free

what I don't like is being paid it then being taxed more to claim it back

like HMRC has a good track record of getting this sort of calculation right!

I'd rather they didn't pay it to me in the first place than pay it, then take it back over the year.

at Libra.

Surely you would need a big pinny for your bump..?!

"It looks as if they will be having to send out tax returns to all HRT payers as standard, which will add cost."

and actually might end up with more tax rebates being given, having just sat down and gone thru my DH accounts for the last 2 years he is due a tax rebate due to certain things being tax deductible which he hasn't claimed as he can't be bothered to fill out a tax form.

Our total child benefit and tax credits comes to £2400 a year, which on top of DH's pay (before tax) still keeps us under £30k household income.

I think CB should be for people with very little money, NOT people with a moderate amount of money who are used to a certain standard of living that they can't necessarily afford since the recession.

notyummy, like handbags, I have a pinny for each and every occasion....

The whole point of CB was that women could buy necessary items for their children without having to go to their husbands, no matter what the household income. Just because a man earns more than £44000 a year doesn't mean he won't blow his money on drink/gambling/cars/lawnmowers etc. rather than give it to the mother for his children. CB was meant to empower women and the whole point of it was that it was universal.

It is the only benefit many people receive and small recompense for bringing up the tax-payers of the future - the ones who are going to pay your pension George.

foxinsocks - you CAN just not claim it, thereby taking HMRC out of the equation.

<Disclaimer - This doesn't affect me.>
Clearly there will be some for whom the removal of CB will be very detrimental and others who will barely miss it. Its a few years off so there is some breathing space thankfully.
All I can think when reading through this thread is - it's the Tories! What did you expect?? There will be worse to come.

"foxinsocks - you CAN just not claim it, thereby taking HMRC out of the equation."

if you don't claim it you won't get pension contributions.

Good point.

@ naetha"above average priced house in a fairly middle class part of the country"

You might be very frugal and making a very good point, but without making clear the size of your mortgage, and the sector your husband is employed in, you could be just lucky.

I can think of plenty of middle class areas where house prices are relatively low. The problem is that if you can't work you can't live there.

Where I live, if your household income is £44K and you are paying a mortgage (or rent) on a very bog standard family house, you certainly aren't spending your CB on foreign holidays.

If we are all 'in this together', it seems a disproportionately large amount to hit some people with when others who earn more (and may not actually work more) won't be hit at all.

It seems to be up there with the 10p tax rate and even the poll tax - surprisingly ill thought out for a party that doesn't really have a mandate.

It also seems bizarre to expect people to give up almost £2000 now as a kind of donation to the government. Maybe this might be a nice thing for Osborne's yacht owning chums to do (probably the price of a bottle of champagne), but it makes him look very out of touch with the majority of wage earners.

I have just written to our MP and told him that the removal of child benefit from our family leaves me with no choice but to split our family up and look after the children on my own.

This is just too much, I can't cope with this.

I take my CB every month and half of it we invest for our children and half of it we spend on clothes and activities for them.

The half that is invested will hopefully go some way to paying for their education or a deposit on a house, both if we keep going this way, will be out of reach for many low and middle income families.

If only DP and I could job share do 2 1/2 days a wee each, no childcare, CB and less tax to pay!

Libra - yes we are in the same position actually, and we are already owed a big rebate because HMRC messed up DH's company car tax for a year and somehow charged him double. They confirmed in February that we were owed the rebate, but nothing yet. I'm guessing because they are dealing with such a backlog of errors - all these millions of over and under-payments that were in the news a couple of weeks ago.

It's not just the personal is it? It's also how it shapes society.

Is a couple who receive benefits incentivised to have more children and not work, where a couple who work hard to earn post cut-off income can't afford more children.

If that is the perception, people will feel aggrieved/ angry.

If they say they will tax it, does that then mean for example that as I receive £1042.60 (one child), dh will then pay 40% on that, which is £417.04, leaving me £625.56 up, or that they will ensure that dh pays the full £1042.60?

I suppose to an extent it is academic for me as I will only get this until mid 2014 anyway.

Merrymouse - the Tories out of touch with the majority of wage earners? Of course they are. Dave and George come from extremely privileged backgrounds. So does Nick Clegg come to that.

Average household income is not double average income! I think it was somewhere around 31k a couple of years ago.

Didn't expect anything less from the tories. This stinks!! I'm another one - SAHM, partner may well be in upper tax bracket in a few yrs, depending on his increments and if he has a job in a few years. £200 a month for 3kids helps lots.

This should be household income. How many more people are going to claim they are separated from their partner.
If you want to work the system - there will be ways around it, no doubt. Just ask some of the long term people on benefits. (Not all I know some want to work - but MANY have no intention of ever working!)
STINKS!!! B***** Tories! Who voted them in?
Not Scotland.

"I take my CB every month and half of it we invest for our children and half of it we spend on clothes and activities for them."

That is not what it's designed for though is it! Why should you be able to get state handouts to build up a nice little savings account for your children?

Riven - yes it is a luxury saving it but we do without in other areas so we can put a bit past for them.

Maybe DP could go self employed and be contracted like some people I know who then revel in telling you about all the tax dodges they can get away with, putting spouse's in their "company" pay roll etc.

I suspect there is a reason why we can't find good figures on family income. ie whether it's mean or median, whether it allows for childcare costs or not, etc. You can bet the information is there, though.

"if you read the thread it has been explained that the benefit would still be paid to the mother, and the tax then taken back off the higher earner.
So it isn't going to be women 'cowtowing' and the NI contribution aspect is also going to be protected."

That point is worth repeating once again before too many people get their knickers in a knot. It changes a very unpalatable proposal into quite a sensible one, although of course the devil's in the detail.

"yes it is a luxury"

Then you don't need it. It should be based on need, nothing else.

The figures are on the ONS website, or at least they used to be

Totally agree with MollysChambers. Why are so many people acting so surprised / outraged when they (as a nation) voted the Tories in?! Statistically some of the people complaining on this thread MUST have voted for them.

I guess it will mean more couples live apart so they dont lose there CB.

The tories lovers are quick to accuse Labour polices which supposedly forces couples to live apart so they could claim more on benefits wreaks of hypocrisy.

@ gaelicsheep Hmm. Thinking about it, the proposal of loosing £1752/year is still not very palatable.

No point in my DH getting promoted then. If we lose all out CTC and our CB then we will be worse off than we are now. Surely there must be some kind of tapering, rather than once you're over the limit you lose everything? Otherwise it's like being taxed at 200%. Although I suppose that would be more expensive to administer if it was tapered.

In the SE with a mortgage, and with 4 mouths to feed, we use that money for normal life. It's not pin money to us.

the one income paying 40% tax is such such bollocks and will affect some households much worse than others

removing a universal benefit like this is such a retrograde thing to do

george osborne and his mates=wankers

"Why are so many people acting so surprised / outraged when they (as a nation) voted the Tories in?!"

Because they didn't vote them in?

scaryteacher, no your dh will pay an extra £1042 in tax

"That point is worth repeating once again before too many people get their knickers in a knot. It changes a very unpalatable proposal into quite a sensible one, although of course the devil's in the detail."

It's also worth repeating that at the moment a lot of HRT don't have to fill in SA forms, this will produce an extra administrative burden that has to be paid for...

I don't really see how they are going to work it all out especially if it is paid to one person and another has to be taxed on it

I reckon this is just the opener and we'll see all the OAP freebies removed too

The main problem with George's plan is that is is unfair.
1)The money comes out of woman's pocket, not a man's. It could be seen as an attack on women.

2)Any loss of benefit which could mean that a family with one worker earning £44,000 could lose the benefit when a family with two below-threshold workers earning a total of £86,000 won't is inequitable. It means an extra 5% tax on a single worker family earning just over the threshold.

I would rather eat my own intestines than vote for any fucking shitting piece of scum tory.

'If they say they will tax it, does that then mean for example that as I receive £1042.60 (one child), dh will then pay 40% on that, which is £417.04, leaving me £625.56 up, or that they will ensure that dh pays the full £1042.60?' Would this be your understanding then Gaelicsheep that the former would be the case, and it won't be lost altogether for HRT families?

Lucky, I am saving mine towards uni costs for ds, which I think we will have to pay in full. I may seem to be gaining from CB, but will lose when it comes to paying for Uni.

Scottie04 - Have never supported Scottish independance in my life but how the hell are we being governed by a party which has been completely annihilated in Scotland? Even that greasy muppet Salmond would be preferable. Lets hope they remember the poll tax marchs....

But merrymouse, surely you see that cuts have to be made? Would you prefer cuts to disability benefits perhaps, or being forced to pay to see a doctor? Cutting benefits paid to higher earners who can cope by cutting their cloth to fit seems fair to me.

Logically, he can't pay an extra £1024 in tax though, unless this is going to be taxed at 100% instead of 40%, which will require a legislation change rather than a SI I would think.

It is retrograde in that it takes away the principle of independent taxation.

I have read the whole thread - honestly - and still cant get my head round it.

Is he saying that for a 2 parent family to lose CB, they would BOTH have to be HRT? If that's the case then fair enough.

What about professionals who are lone parents? If they alone are HRT, do they lose out? That's not fair, surely the limit should be higher for them.

Could someone clarify please (apologies, if I'm being a bit dim).

What do cuts like these really mean to a high earning family? Skipping a holiday perhaps, running one less car, or really not being able to eat?

This won't affect us but I agree with SAF that it should have been implemented so CB stopped after 2 children for everyone.

Seems to me that would have tied in with IDS plans better.

It's a shambles atm, always knew he would be a terrible chancellor

"If you want to work the system - there will be ways around it, no doubt. Just ask some of the long term people on benefits."

Actually, I might pop round to my local Tory MP's house for a cuppa and get some pointers on offshore trusts and non dom status. That's the key I think. Just make sure everything you earn over the threshold is safely stashed in a tax haven.

According to this if one person is paying HRT, it goes.

If two people are both paying basic rate tax, it doesn't go.

So you could be earning £45k as a household and not get it, or £86k as a household and get it.

@gaelicsheep - I'm more of an increase tax kind of a girl.

Personally, gaelicsheep, I would rather see a more measured approach such as Alistair Darling's which would have been less dangerous to the economy, as well as more serious attempts to tax the financial industry properly, and to close tax loopholes for the super-rich, rather than focussing on those with lower and middle income and decimating public services.

"But it also implies that the HRT is to tick a box, a lot of HRT don't fill in self-assesment forms, this will create MORE paperwork and therefore cost more to administrate."

Afaik if you are a higher-rate taxpayer you have to fill in a self-assessment form even if you pay tax through PAYE.

Why shouldn't cuts hit the better off more than the actual poor?

Crazy if they're really envisaging a situation where £1 of extra earnings could mean a lot less actual income.

I should think anyone in our situation - just fractionally into the 40% band, but by less than the after-tax value of child benefit (£1750ish per year for 2 kids) - will just end up opting to pay extra AVCs to keep themselves below the limit.

So merrymouse, you wouldn't mind if GO was proposing to increase the higher rate to say 60%? Or only if the threshold was above your/your DH's earnings?

scaryteacher, it looks like a tax increase because of the way it will be administered, but they are not taxing CB, they are taking it away, so yes he will pay 100%.

nah, you don't have to fill in a tax return just because you are a HRT

"Afaik if you are a higher-rate taxpayer you have to fill in a self-assessment form even if you pay tax through PAYE"

Nope MYTH, only if you earn over £100,000.

gaelicsheep. Why assume that everyone who is a higher tax payer can afford to lose the benefit.

We cannot afford to lose the benefit and there must be thousands of other families in our situation. I know families who earn a pittance but they have more disposable income than us because they were shrewd enough to buy a house before house prices went crazy.

We cannot afford to lose our child benefit. It pays for food and clothes for my children. I said earlier in the thread that this will mean that I have no choice but to leave dh and I am not being dramatic I now have no choice this is the final straw we can no longer afford to stay together. How do I look my children in the eye and say that I am splitting up their family because we can't afford to stay together. What is the fucking point?

Meg - not at the moment. It was scrapped about 4/5 years ago for HRT payers that had straightforward situations - ie. one job, no self-employment etc.

merrymouse - do you not see the irony? The people who are going to be affected by the loss of CB are exactly the same people who would be hit by any tax rise.

"What do cuts like these really mean to a high earning family? Skipping a holiday perhaps, running one less car, or really not being able to eat?"

If you are unfortunate enough to have to work in the south east, and have the mortgage to go with it, then yes, it could mean either running no car, or cutting down on food.

Obviously it would be wonderful if there wasn't such a concentration of jobs in the south east and it wasn't so over crowded and expensive, but at the moment, £44K for a family of 4 isn't a large amount of money.

Yes the balance between services received and taxes paid needs to be adjusted. However, this seems an incredibly clumsy and clunky way of doing it though.

A 2 child maximum across the board would have been a better and fairer cut.

A blanket £20 for one child, £30 for two would be a lot easier to administer than "oh wait a minute we will STILL give you your CB but then take it off your husband in tax which he will then need to fill in a form for every year and we will need to administer it because we are super efficient at doing that and never make mistakes"

Or scrap CTC and make Childcare affordable for all.

thedollshouse - how can it be better to run two households? If you are earning enough that you are going to lose your CB then you won't be eligible for any other benefits will you?

I see as this as yet another kick in the teeth for us from the Gov - we are a single income family with 3 children under 7, living in the SE and with a huge mortgage - our single income is over the HR threshhold. As we rely on a public sector income we have pay freezes and job insecurity already.

The 'cheap' method being employed to avoid expensive admin costs means it is not as fair as it should be and although I appreciate that dual income familys can have increased child care costs to deal with it still feels unfair.

I support the concept of universal benefits and am concerned about the loss of my Home Resposibilities protection - how will that aspect be administered and how much will that add to the costs of implementing this policy? Is that included in working out the £1bn we are meant to be gaining?

I am all for redistributive policies but this does not feel like a truly progressive method to me.

I did not and never will vote Tory (or Lib Dem) and do not want to come over as a whining pampered house wife - my youngest DD is going to be starting school in 2013 and I was planning to go back into employment in some way then anyway but I just feel this is the thin end of a very nasty wedge.

Something had to be done about CB, cuts have to be made and it's only right that wealthier people who don't need CB get it cut.

Every situtation is different, I know, but if someone is earning enough to pay higher rate tax then they shouldn't need it.

It won't affect me as my child will be 18 by then and I have never earned anywhere near the higher rate threshold yet I still only got the same CB as someone who has and the extra money isn't just 'nice' to have but absolutely essential to someone like me as a single parent on a lowish income.

Time for everyone to cut their coat blah blah.

I'd like to see the fine detail on how this will be administered first Zep. There has been no confirmation of how the mechanics of this will actually work that I can see in the press.

I understand they are not taxing it, but why ask for details on DH's ITR in that case? It is undermining the principle of independent taxation.

Am watching The Daily Politics Conference on telly at the moment and as the guy on there says, this is just the tip of the iceberg. You think this is bad? Shocking? After the Tories promised, in their election campaign that Child Benefit would be protected? That's the least of our worries. This is the tip of the iceberg.

The Tories, with the excuse of our current position, will be able to approach all kinds of holy cows and dismantle them. There will be uproar, but what can we really do about it?

I didn't vote for the Tories. For anyone who did, you wait and see how destructive a political party can be. You think that NuLabour were bad? Well, you ain't seen nothing yet!

A 2 child limit would not be fair to the 3rd or 4th children, especially in families whose parents might not be prepared to give up their own luxuries to compensate (fags, booze, etc). If they only brought in the limit for subsequent children but protected existing ones then I guess the savings would not be achieved quickly enough.

Let's hope this is one of several interim measures until IDS's very sensible proposals are adopted.

Receiving CB provides one way of getting Home Responsibilities Protection which pays your NI for your pension contributions. Hope that will be maintained.

I find this an extraordinary move by the Government, purely because of the disproportionate affect it will have on families where one parent chooses to stay at home.

DH should earn just over £44,000 this year but I don't work as I have 2 small children and have chosen to stay at home. I imagine this is a choice many families make when their children are small.

We will lose our child benefit.

But if I worked, DH and I could have a combined income of £87,000 and we would still receive the benefit.

So when I need the benefit the most, it will be taken away from me.

If the Government's policy is to encourage more women into work, they should just say so. Oh but, then they'd have to do something about the soaring costs of child care.

'if someone is earning enough to pay higher rate tax then they shouldn't need it.'

The male in the partnership may be, but not always the Mum. It's not losing the CB that worries me, but the HRP for those women who stay at home to look after their kids and who will now have a massive shortfall in their pension contributions.

You also assume that income is shared - not in all households it ain't as has been demonstrated on MN time and again.

I agree that pegging it to the size of the family might be fairer.

So I will now have to fill in a tax return which someone will have to send me and someone will have to process (I don't get a form at present). I reckon that will eat a fair chunk into any saving GO makes from denying me CB. Seems to be a bit of showboating as far as I can see. It will be interesting to see the real saving, if any.

Ali. We will be better off because dh will move in with his parents so he will have minimal costs and the benefits that I will receive will be more than we are left with each month after paying mortgage and travel costs and I will only have 3 mouths to feed instead of 4.

We won't do it to defraud the system we will actually end our relationship so will be entitled to the benefits.

Well I have just worked out that whilst we will lose THREE THOUSAND a year, a family that takes home (ie AFTER TAX) THIRTY THOUSAND more than we do will still get it.

Fair - I don't think so.

I also have a bee in my bonnet about universal benefits to old people such as winter fuel allowance and even the old aged pension to an extent.

These are people who have spent their lives with free university education, universal child benefit, low house prices and now expect universal benefits in their old age too.

All of this is being denied to our generation and our children.

It sucks.

LeninGrad - see further down the thread. It seems Home Responsibilites Protection will be protected by continuing to pay CB but clawing it back from the HRT.

i think they should only pay it for up to 2 children.

and not for 50% tax earners.

"This should be household income"

so long as they raise the threshold, yes.

Alibaba - yes it does feel all ideologically wrong.

CB should be an integral part of a Universal Benefit System. There should be an element of a Universal Benefit paid to each child - not just to its parent.

That payment should not depend on some cack handed measure of parental income. It should not be means tested - that after all the true definition of Universal Benefit in that everyone gets it.

Another thing. I thought we had moved away from viewing women as appendages of their DH/DP in the tax system? This proposal seems to take us back to that but without the advantage of Married Man's Allowance yet making the woman more financially dependent on her man. This is ideologically all over the place.

...and allow the non earner to transfer their tax allowance to the earner as well Fanjo.

dollshouse that seems very drastic. How can money be more important than a family staying together?

scaryteacher, I think you can apply for HRP another way, not sure, it's just that receiving CB provides a way to that. It's the reason why we got it paid to DP (SAHM) and not me (WOHM, paying NI via PAYE).

Surely, surely, they would not reduce a SAHM's state pension contributions?

"So merrymouse, you wouldn't mind if GO was proposing to increase the higher rate to say 60%? Or only if the threshold was above your/your DH's earnings?"

I think 60% would be a bit extreme. However, I think income tax could be increased (although I would raise the higher rate threshold), capital gains tax could be increased (or the annual allowance could be lowered), or the inheritance tax threshold could be freezed for a couple of years. My DH earns quite a lot above the higher rate threshold, and were I to work full time, I would too.

Cutting child benefit is far more indiscriminate than increasing income tax. It doesn't matter if your partner earns £44K and you are staying at home to support a child with special needs, or your partner earns £200K a year and you spend your CB on tennis lessons - you still loose the same amount of money.

I'd already pointed that out Beenbeta re independent taxation, but I was ignored. Glad someone else has picked up on it.

We can't take this on the chin.

We must do something about it. Anyone up for a repeat of the poll tax riots?

sorry gaelicsheep, not keeping up, what's HRT?

I agree much more with the idea of CB only for the first two children; easier to administer, too. The threshold for HR tax isn't exactly the skyhigh sum people seem to think it is in the SE - it's ridiculous to imagine people spending CB on foreign holidays when it's probably all going on the mortgage and the gas bill.

"Meg - not at the moment. It was scrapped about 4/5 years ago for HRT payers that had straightforward situations - ie. one job, no self-employment etc. "

So what about interest on savings accounts? Do these high rate tax payers get to pay this at basic rate? How do they claim back for charitable giving?

It is an attack on families who made the decision for one partner to work and the other to raise the children. And fwiw I know quite a number of families where the father stays at home, so it's not just an attack on women.

Also the loopholes are numerous. Someone has already mentioned the self-employed. I bet the accountants out there are rubbing their hands.

And for those who say they can't be bothered to get divorced for the CB, well, I don't suppose I could, but when you consider that if university fees rise to £10-12K a year and you'd get the fees free if you no longer had that irritating money-earning husband hanging around, then it's a definite consideration...

Suddenly Labour's 1p rise in NI doesn't seem that bad.

DC ranted on and on about Labour's Job Tax and putting an end to it but there's no jobs out there anymore, there's pay freezes galore, no recruiting in public service roles, job cuts, disability/housing benefits reduced etc, education cuts.

Absolutely finances should be fully individualised, it is absolute bullshit to base all this on someone else's income, god, we're going backwards.

This is a long overdue redress of something that was patently unfair. The old example was that Cherie Blair could claim CB for her brood, even though she was on hundreds of thousands as a QC. And the hands would go up that this was so unfair. So it's going .. and a lot of us will be worse off short-term and try to justify our annoyance by making out that £44,000 doesn't go as far as it used to etc. etc.

That potential anomaly about two people on £30k getting CB whereas 1 person on £50k doesn't needs to be sorted out pronto because that is no fairer than the old system. But we can't complain at the principle that the well-off are expected to pay and the poor get help.

higher rate taxpayer

I'm sure HRP will remain as they will still pay out the CB but just claim it back in tax from the Higher Rate Taxpayer.

Gaelic sheep - we have one v cheap hol a year (in the uk) we run one car (but I do not drive), we have high fixed costs, no private schools or skiing trips here though.

I think the target is wrong, cutting income for families at a time of econmomic uncertainty will have a detrimental affect on discretionary spending surely this will not be good for the economy?

But maybe it will help bring about the revolution - Middle Class Revolt - you have nothing to lose but your artisan bread and rather nice chablis... etc.

It is mainly a choice for a mum to stay at home and live on a partners income, if he won't share, then that is a relationship/lifestyle issue.

We need to find out exactly how the changes will be brought it. Hopefully they will protect the pension credits still.

Ali. Money isn't more important but not having enough money to pay for the basics is intolerable.

I'm not bothered about the threshold, average earnings would do for me, but it has to be individualised.

DP earns nothing but receives CB and gets her stamp paid, her future state pension should not be affected by what I do or don't earn. She is a citizen making a contribution to society in her own right.

Thanks fis (hello LTNS!), rubbish idea, absolutely rubbish.

DuellingFanjo why should they raise the threshold? How can it be fair that a single income household of £44,000 would be worse off than a dual income household of £86,000? I would be happy if it was per household at £44,000. Means I wouldn't qualify but would also mean the dual incomes of £86,000 wouldn't qualify either.

Rather depends what you call the basics doesn't it? Contract mobile phone? Sky TV? Annual holiday? Many people call these basics, I call them luxuries that the taxpayer shouldn't be paying for.

abouteve. I don't think being a SAHM is necessarily a lifestyle choice. I'm currently on maternity leave and if I return to work I will receive £3 a month after paying a childminder.

hi lenin! hope your return to work wasn't too traumatic.

All good thanks! Just fuming now about anything that reduces the status and financial future of DP.

BB/scaryteacher - I object to the lack of independence about it. If they want to link DH and I completely in terms of tax and let me transfer my personal allowance to him while I'm not working then that is a different matter - but a half and half is unacceptable.

I would be more willing to consider the loss of child benefit if there was some redress at the other end of the scale - eg paid for two children only from now on. So existing children would not lose the benefit, but if you know you have two now, you know that's it as far as future CB is concerned.

It is utter madness to expect someone on £45K to be noble about losing several thousand pounds whilst not curbing it for others.

thedollshouse you will still have a net benefit though won't you. Think about those of us who are single income households and single parents. I have to pay all my childcare costs out of one income and don't have a choice about whether to work or not. Imagine not having an income and having to pay all your childcare costs out of your dh's salary. That is what I have to do and now I won't get CB either.

thedollshouse surely if you and your husband split up he would have to pay you maintenance? Although I am not exactly happy about this change to CB, your solution does seem rather extreme.

Dollshouse, then it wouldn't be worth you returning to work. I would like to see investment in affordable, good quality childcare.

Ridiculous idea. Will be affected but only just.

It would be a lot better if there was a cap on how many DC's they would pay for. I think that they should only pay for the first 2 children. I am currently ttc3 by the way so that would include me too but a much fairer system.

Don't think there will be much investment in affordable childcare or anything else for the forseeable.

yes, can understand that, would be madness to lose that HRP.

Fwiw, when I was listening to him speak this morning, he said they had chosen this way of operating it (i.e. households with one HRT or both) because this was, for them, the simplest way of operating it without it being too costly in terms of administration.

I will be looking at our employees nearer the time, especially those earning near the threshold as it may make sense for some people to stay just under it rather than earning a £1 over it. If you are near that threshold in 2013, I would think it would be a good idea to discuss it with your employer .

Another loss to the Homemaker household.

No really I dont mind losing £188/month, no I dont mind having to send my kids to crap state schools because I cant afford to educate them privately, no I dont mind working until I'm 113 because the state pension wont even keep me in socks and the company pension pot (to which I have contributed handsomely) got frittered away on early retirements.

What I do mind is any intimation that any of this was my fault. I wasnt here when politicians squandered the country's money on half baked, ill thought out schemes and projects.

I wasnt here for tax credits, free nursery places, maternity grants, children's bonds etc. I just seem to have arrived back in time to pay the bill.

I will pay because I dont have a choice but dont expect me to be happy about it.

"DP earns nothing but receives CB and gets her stamp paid, her future state pension should not be affected by what I do or don't earn. She is a citizen making a contribution to society in her own right."

Lenin - I'm in the same boat as your dp. My understanding is I could claim CB regardless of dh's income. But if he's a higher rate tax payer- he has to declare it on his tax return (and it will be deducted, in total, from him).

scaryteacher - "They don't (in theory) know my household income, as we are taxed separately.

Yes a very good practical point. How do they think they are going to know joint family income. Am I (the man of house) to start being legally obliged to report DW's income?

I do hope they will abolish the Portable Child Benefit available to EU citizens looking for work in the UK but who have children living in their own country.
Example: Polish man or woman can be actively looking for work in the UK have several children living in Poland and are entitled to claim UK child benefit. Could save a few million quid if this was abolished.

Chil1234 - so take away Cherie Blair's child benefit then - but don't pretend that this is the same as reducing a family's annual income by 5% when they earn £44K/year.

Gaelic 'the Tax payer' includes those claim CB if you pay tax and get a certain amount back to recognise the costs of raising a family (of future tax payers) I fail to see the problem with that - I do not get to choose where tax income goes (nuclear weapons, illegal wars, free schools whatever) the cb is least of the 'evils' imo.

Lenin - the NI contribution aspect is being protected.

If anyone is interested George Osborne is just about to take the stage at the Tory Party Conference in the next 20 mins.

You can probably watch him on Sky and Parliament Channel I think and no doubt it will be all over the news later.

" MollysChambers

Scottie04 - Have never supported Scottish independance in my life but how the hell are we being governed by a party which has been completely annihilated in Scotland? Even that greasy muppet Salmond would be preferable. Lets hope they remember the poll tax marchs...."

I wasn't going to mention the poll tax!!!! FOr that reason alone I will NEVER vote tory. I just dont't know what all the tory voters expected. Oh to be at home in Scotland and listen to all the anti -Tory banter!!!

I know whatever party got in would have to make cuts but the Tories are going about it HARD! I am sick to death of those who work having to pay for everything. Those who don't work (and know how the system works)pay for nothing and get everything.
Now to start looking for a part time job and DH to drop a few hours. There ain' t going to be much left for our kids.

thedollshouse "Money isn't more important but not having enough money to pay for the basics is intolerable"

If you can't afford the basics of food, heat and shelter when your DP is on HRT one of you must surely be on crack!

just written to my MP to complain.

I am lp living in London paying extortionate rent (so much so that I receive a small amount of HB) NB its the market rent for this area for a very small house.

Im not sure whether I am HRP (prob just under) but object to the fact that if dual income both under won't be affected, the benefit is paid to the mother for the benefit of the child, the NI issue, that the cost of admininstering is prob more than or equal to the saving.

It will penalise single income households such as my own. Discriminating against women. Im not a particular supporter of SAHMs and have never wanted to be one (mainly because I have not wanted to ever be dependent upon a man) but this makes their already vulnerable position more so.

And lastly but not rationally because I despise the Conservatives and all they stand for.

Thanks Ali, it's still a rubbish idea. The whole thing is bonkers, it should be all individual. Everyone should have their own allowances and responsibilities and so on.

I am not sure my TV could take the abuse...

st, BB, you already make a joint claim for CTC, although I don't ever remember DP signing or declaring anything. Even that though could be done on an individual basis. There are flaws in all systems but this is just ridiculous.

The free 15 hr childcare for 3-4 yrs old will go next. Oh - but my poor child has to go to school when she is 4 !!

I wrote this on the other thread (there is one in AIBU as well):

"I have to say, my heart sank when I heard the announcement on CB.

we are a higher earning household (dh works, i don't - I care for dd1, who is severely ASD)

yes, dh's wage slips show a decent salary.

in the past 3 years we have:

had to move house twice, chasing appropriate schooling for dd1. our current rent (we have to live where we do, again because of dd1's schooling) is triple what our mortgage was before we had to move. we still own (hah! the bank does, inreality) our house, which is rented out - it covers it's mortgage and management fees, but of course our outgoings have tripled.

we have paid: £30k the first year for dd1's ASD pre-school; £50k last year for her schooling, plus

Ed Psych fees, legal fees to take the LA to court, private OT (none provided for pre-schoolers, none provided for children with no gross motor delays, none provided for children who don't have a physical disability - the list of excuses changes every time you ask) - this costs £100 per hour, dd1 goes weekly. Tbh, the list goes on as to what we have paid out for dd1 to just get a suitable education.

currently, the LA are paying her fees (we won the legal fight), but her statement is up for review in December, as it will be annually, and no doubt we will have to fight again. I expect there will be further years where we pay her fees, while we fight to keep her in the only school which has enabled her to learn.

I am bloody grateful that we can afford all this, but of course the money is not just sitting htere - it all has to be budgeted for.

and, when the bills all come in at once, there has been many a time when the CB is what has been used to put food on the table, and clothes on our backs.

so, we are to lose CB. but I notice that we are not guaranteed to never have to pay out like we have had to do so far for dd1.

life sucks, sometimes."

I agree with Lenin on this too - there is no way my general stauts should be dependent on what dh earns, or doesn't earn.

We are married, not joined at the hip.

There is precious little chance of me being able to earn anything at all in the next few years - caring puts paid to that (and there is an interesting question mark over Carer's allowance too - looks like it might be lumped in as part of the Universal Credit thing, which means many would lose that too)

How the friggety feck will they determine all this. "Do the mother(s) of your children claim CB, if so, for how many children? That'll be an £x reduction in your tax code matey." Will work process it through PAYE? Bonkers.

gaelic I don't have a contract mobile phone or sky tv and luckily our holiday was a freebie.

Dh only just earns over the £44k threshold. After paying the mortgage (2 up 2 down) and commuting costs we are left with £400 to cover the bills and food. Each month we run out of money and use the child benefit to cover costs I use the remainder to buy pressies, I have already started my xmas shopping and have bought discount books and big things from carboot sales.

I suppose the alternative would be for dh to take a paycut so his earnings are just below the threshold. Might be worth investigating.

Very true Big mouth. CB is a nod towards the idea that you might pay shedloads of tax all your life, but when you are raising children, the burden is slightly less.

The basic problem with this move (and why it is sooooo silly) is that it hits people on not very high incomes disproportionately. £44K to support 4 people, as is highly likely in the child bearing years, really is not a lot of money. Why not raise income tax slightly to spread the burden over more people and stop child benefit for those paying 50% tax? Why not lower the 50% tax band?

I do not believe that there are not fairer ways to raise money. I do believe that the Conservatives are terrified of raising taxes. (As are all politicians, to be fair).

STOP THE PRESS "Tories make unfair cuts and people are surprised"

Where's the story? I can't believe people didn't expect this to happen.
Of course it's unfair but so are the Tories. Women and children first for the cuts, how gallant!

I've always seen child benefit, which was orinigally called family Allowance, as an allowance that appreciates that adults who choose to have children will incur greater costs than those who do not have children, regardless of what your income actually is as a family.

DP earns just over 45K a year, we have four children so will lose over 3K a year.

We live in Scotland and have a reasonable mortgage on a 3 bed house (are looking to extend using a small inheritance).

We do have two cars though, one 7 years old, one 5 years old, one is needed so DP can go to work. One small UK holiday a year. No private school, no foreign holidays.

We do not smoke or drink or go out. Everything is spent on the DCs.

Childcare costs means I cannot afford to work (and yes we chose to have 4 children), everyone I know who has 2 parents working has childcare from a family member, we don't have this option.

I really do not feel well off and am in tears at the thought of losing this money.

FGS - I REFUSE to sacrifice my child benefit and yet see it sent to someone's children who are in Poland .

I thought of that as well what about people who Stay at Home to look after disabled children, who cannot go to work?

lol gramercy. You can almost see the Daily Mail headline tomorrow!

I bet they would have made more if they'd simply asked HRT to not claim it (I know plenty still would have done but I bet the net gain from those who didn't claim would make more money than the net gain after trying to administrate all of this and taking account of the fact that HMRC would have screwed it up!)

Oh I agree Unfit mother - not surprised at all - you get what you not me !! vote for - just pissed off.

DH and I earn roughly equal amounts, both under HRT threshold so will be OK.
DSis has 5 children, some pre-school and is a SAHM, her DH is a HRT payer - just, so she will lose out.
The only thing that is remotely fair about this is she voted Tory, I didn't.
Seriously though, it sucks!

unfitmother

I wish I was on crack!

If you must know dh brings home £2,100 a month, our mortgage is £1,100 a month and he has commuting costs of £600.

We have made stupid decisions we bought when property was very expensive but we can't move into rented because it isn't any cheaper and we don't have much equity in the house to cover costs.

He took a job far away from home to gain good experience he never intended to stay there forever but unfortunately the recession took hold.

He pays quite a lot of tax thats why his take home pay is less than you might expect because he has a company car. It would cost the same for him to catch the train to work instead of driving and he would pay less tax but unfortunately he needs lots of surverying equipment etc so it wouldn't be viable.

thedollshouse - at the margin a tax payer who earns £44001 will effectively being charged marginal rate of tax of something like 10,000,000% because the extra £1 they earn will lose them several thousand in CB.

A Chancellors should know that putting knife edge structures in the tax/benefit system like this proposal cause ridiculous outcomes.

Its teh sam eissu ethat occurs with Stamp Duty on houses suddenly jumping at certain threshold levels of price so no house sells for just over the threshold price. In teh same way no one wil accpet a pay rise that pushes them just over the threshold but push for a wage rise that compensates them for loss of CB or just work less hours.

This shows the fundamental problem with flat rate tax and a lack of a progressive taxation system.

I can't believe we're going backwards to women being a financial 'liability' or appendage to men (in general, as that's how this will pan out for most).

Lenin I'm in the same boat as your dp - but my understanding is I could claim CB regardless of dh's income. But if he's a higher rate tax paydr - he has to declare it on his tax return (and it will be deducted, in total, from him).

That's shit riven.

I think you are right though it CB and CTC will be scrapped altogether a few years after under the "Universal Credit" scheme the Tories are proposing.

They want to get more people out to work, where exactly?

Well its pretty clear to me that between us all on this thread we have already figured out why this CB announcement is a badly thought through policy.

One wonders why an army of Trasury civil servants couldn't do that or did the ministers ignore them I wonder?

'BB/scaryteacher - I object to the lack of independence about it. If they want to link DH and I completely in terms of tax and let me transfer my personal allowance to him while I'm not working then that is a different matter - but a half and half is unacceptable'

Exactly. I had said this earlier as well.

Then that is utter, utter nonsense, it is reducing my DP and everything she does to being a tax liability. It's crass.

Do I have to go to payroll and tell them how many children the mothers of my children are claiming for?

"I really do not feel well off and am in tears at the thought of losing this money."

I'm really sorry that you're upset, but you ahve said that you put half of this money into savings every month for your children. You don't need that half, or you would be using it. You have the money to extend your house.

Why should the state support your kids saving accounts? Why should low rate tax payers also support you having two cars, an extension and a small holiday when they can't afford food?

scaryteacher - yes I agree with that too. Indeed allowing a transfer of personal allowances would have been a perhaps a good way or at least a less bad way of replacing CB.

And I thought we mustn't add to the burdens of employers in being the gatekeepers for all this. May as well organise CTC through them too or just adjust tax codes if they are going to start to be responsible for tracking how many children I have where.

I know that only 10% of the population earn over the 40% limit, but probably a large proportion of these people live in the south east of England around London where housing costs and commuting costs are so much higher than the rest of the country. So many of these earners will have less disposable income than people earning the same amount in other parts of GB. The majority of those earning over the 40% threshold are not earning over £100,000 but are earning £40,000-£50,000. Cameron and Clegg are not in the real world if they think that people on a household income of this amount, living in the south east, are wealthy enough to not miss this amount of money. It equates to a huge drop in salary or a huge rise in tax.

I am quite surprised by this announcement. Either the books are far, far worse than we have been told and therefore necessitate such a cut, or the Government has made a monumentally stupid decision.

All the parents I know will be affected by this cut. None of us are wealthy. If this cut will really affect just 15% of the population then there must be a further 85% who are really, really badly off...

The pressure to find ways to earn more and more money just to afford a reasonable standard of living is getting too much in this country. And once again those at the very top of the pile and those nearer the bottom (but some with a more comfortable standard of living than with 2 parents working, big mortgage and childcare) remain unaffected.

BB- Is this one of the things IDS and GO were arguing over?

Also, is there not some equality infringement if employees are required to declare to their employers how many children they have?

None of their business, surely.

'Why should low rate tax payers also support you having two cars, an extension and a small holiday when they can't afford food?'

Mmmm, specious a bit. The higher rate taxpayers are paying for the CB as well. It's my dh's salary that pays for the cars, the mrtgage etc, not lower rate taxpayers.

So if the biological parent of the children is absent and their income is HRT then do they loose the child benefit in taxation and the resident household still keep it?

We pay over £40k in tax a year, and will consequently lose our child benefit despite my husband's income being our only source of income to support our three children - so what exactly will we get for our taxes going forward?

No married persons allowance to 'encourage family life', no nursery vouchers from 2011 onwards, no child benefit. Our local school is average, the local hospital seems to spend most of its time being sued for malpractice, and our village barely has a street light to fund.

We try to live healthy lives, which hopefully means we won't burden the NHS, we don't commit crime, ask for housing benefit etc. Our son will need private coaching to bring his English and maths up to standard.

The middle classes aren't a bank for the poor, or conversely the city. When will we see the benefits of our hard work?

lucky - yes you do have a point but the chances are my DC won't be able to go to university if I don't save for them now.

DP and I are both from low income families and have hefty student loans and scrapped and struggled to get good jobs. DP pays his fair share in tax as it is. We only have money to extend our house as my MIL died and left it to us. Yes if we were truly hard up we would need it for food.

I am not saying we shouldn't have our CB reduced but to scrap it altogether in the manner they have proposed is unfair.

@ Edmonds5... if you pay £40k tax then your take-home is significant. Anyone who thinks they are paying in tax for what they can get back is always going to be disappointed

STOP THE PRESS "Cameron and Clegg are not in the real world"

Who'd have thought it? Gideon George Osbourne is another one who is on a different planet to the vast majority in this country. You knew all this before the election.

A few weeks ago the outcry was that the burden of the cuts would fall more heavily on the poor than the rich and this was seen as a bad thing. Now we have a measure which definitely affects the poor less than the rich and we're not happy with that either.

@sweetkitty, you have 2 years before these changes take effect and you have 'good jobs' by your own admission. Count your blessings.

One of the awful outcomes of this is going to be absolute irrational dislike between social classes. Resentment towards those they perceive as freeloading/ to those couples earning the same as the single earner households and getting Child Benefit/ etc etc.

I've been expecting it to be cut for ages - it only being cut for higher rate taxpayers is actually better news than I expected from the weekend's news. Though I expect they'll come back for more. We have a household income of just over £50K but it's divided 55-45 between us, I earn slightly more, and we're both basic rate tax payers.

Although our household income sounds good, childcare costs at the moment means CB makes a real difference, along with a small amount of tax credit and childcare vouchers, to making work pay. Those 3 things at the moment add up to nearly as much as the difference between take home pay and childcare plus fares to work of more than £1,000.

I think that we're better off than some households with one higher rate payer.

There is also the issue of taking money away from some women that they have control over, if their husbands or partners are well paid but keep/spend their wages (a problem that CB was introduced to address thoughmore for working class families).

The money that is going to be saved from 1.2million fmailies not getting child benifit, is going to be used to pay for the new universal credit - the goveremnt need to save this money to pay for the universal credit to be brought in - where we will have a sytem of benifits to people working to make it better of working than not - just like tax credits.....

nymphadora - I suspect this may well have been one of the things GO and IDS were arguing over. The criteria set by Treasury was these Universal Benefit changes had to pay for themselves.

This proposal to cut CB certainly has the look of a blunt instrument compromise.

Just been on the phone to DW who is hospital recovering from a op but even throuh the haze of painkillers her reaction to this when I told her was - that is mad!

She also quickly worked out we would still get CB for the 2 DSs even though I know for a fact I am far far better off than someone with a family struggling to make ends meet with one earner on £50k in the South East.

That does not make me feel good.

grumpy pants - that suits the government well

Am sitting here PG with DC2 now wondering how on earth we are going to afford to live...

- no childcare vouchers from next year
- no child benefit for DD or additional benefit for DC2
- no maternity pay for me (I run my own business)
- DH earning less now than he was three years ago (works in corporate sales, commissions have shrunk)
- energy bills rising every year
- mortgage still massive...

We may have to sell up and go to Australia or something. Maybe the Government would prefer it if all the intelligent, young, professional families in the UK who pay the bills and claim very little back from the state upped and left? Because ultimately that's what we're heading towards. A repeat of the 1970s.

Quite, Edmonds5.

And I want to add that I am not a bank for greedy pensioners, either.

The elderly are always depicted as desperately poor and shivering over a one-bar fire. As I peer out of my window I spy fit and healthy 60-somethings trotting out of their £800K houses (bought for £25K) swinging their golf clubs, setting off on cruises and driving off in shiny cars to gastropubs.

And they get winter fuel allowance.

I have only skimmed the thread, so apologies if this has already been said.

But it seems to me that targeting the middle classes in removing CB from a significant swathe of people is to create anger at those people lower down the scale, in order for the coalition to push through draconian cuts to other benefits which normally would be met with opposition.

I went back to work and literally worked to pay the childcare. I accepted that. You work those first years pretty much as a loss. What you gain is X amounts of years in the workplace and the salary increases/job knowledge that you gain from not having to give up work.

'I want to know why rich pensioners get winter fuel allowance?'

i imagine that like CB it has always been easier/cheaper to administer as a universal rather than a means-tested benefit

There were plans being drawn up pre-election by the civil servants who had anticipated that dealing with WFA would be high on the priority list of the new government. But it was seen as too politically sensitive at the time and the plans were shelved. Since then it's clear that 'needs must'... and if the government want to do something about it, there's no point dithering.

Looking at the scale of benefit payments in the Times on Saturday, the amount for CB/Income Supporty and Jobseekers is absolutely dwarfed by the bill for the state pension.

Can't imagine that the coalition would want to alienate their core voter by reducing that bill, however.

Chil - I used to have a good job, I gave it up and we moved from the SE to Scotland so we could afford to have children. If DP still has a job in 3 years and gets payrises I suppose we will be OK, but that's a big IF.

I still don't know how they are going to work it and will it be open to all sorts of abuse?

I don't regret for one minute my tax paying for families who are poorer or more needy of the money.

I do regret it bailing out banks who leant more than they should have done to people who shouldn't have had the money and for public sector final salary pensions which have been unaffordable for the majority of private sector workers for many years.

"If this cut will really affect just 15% of the population then there must be a further 85% who are really, really badly off..."

Are you disputing that there are only 15% people earning over 40K? I'm pretty sure that's the case.

ScaryTeacher
"Mmmm, specious a bit. The higher rate taxpayers are paying for the CB as well. It's my dh's salary that pays for the cars, the mrtgage etc, not lower rate taxpayers."

Fair point, should have said the government rather than the lower paid tax payers. Still believe that point stands though with the amendment

SweetKitty
"but the chances are my DC won't be able to go to university if I don't save for them now."

Very true and you're hardly alone in that. That's not what the child benefit is for though, making a nest egg.

I would agree with you Chill if the cuts related to household income - but it is not therefore higher income households with 2 earners will not lose out - so of course we won'tt be starving on the streets - but equally those single income hh at the bottom of the HRT threshold are going to be disproportionally affected as has been pointed out many times...

sincity - Probably yes. Then we can all blame each other and continue with our stereotypical views. I can already see the DM spread tomorrow.

Getorf - that's v cynical...

We are South East; I was married before and have inherited debts; our mortgage is huge, and my wages cover exactly half the child care. The rest goes on petrol really. So the loss of Child Benefit won't mean less in savings, it will mean juggling money.

Now I'm dreading free child care (15 hours) going.

I was reading that in Japan, where the old have traditionally been venerated, a tide of contempt has grown for elderly people because there are so darn many of them. People resent the increasing tax burden.

There is going to be trouble here too because the working population cannot possibly sustain the expected number of pensioners as the baby boomers start retiring without increased taxation.

Who would take paying 60% tax on £45K on the chin to support next door's winter fuel allowance where the 60-year-olds are on the same pension as you earn and have no expenses? I'd be lobbing a few dog poos over the fence, I can tell you.

Gramercy - Supporting pensioners will be an ever increasing problem as families are actively discouraged from having more children as they can't afford them. Todays kids are tomorrows tax-payers!

"why are they waiting 3 years if the country is in dire straights right now?"

Presumably because they need to get the back end in place to deal with the admin?

'Why should low rate tax payers also support you having two cars, an extension and a small holiday when they can't afford food?'

Why should I buy a jaffa cake with no VAT and buy a digestive biscuit with VAT. Why should there be entrepreneur's relief on CGT and why are offshore trusts allowed?

Why can anybody go to an NHS hospital or a state school regardless of income?

Child benefit is not a means tested benefit. It is a benefit that recognises the increased cost of bringing up children during their dependent years. So what if rich people earning hundreds of thousands of pounds claim child benefit? You can easily make up the difference by taxing them more. Just don't pretend that a 5% reduction in household income for a family living on £44,000 is fair.

I don't have any articulate comment to add to this thread but wanted to register an aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh
how many more ways are we going to be shafted by this government ?

Hmmmm.

It also looks as if carer's will be meanstested (or at elast brought under universal credit which is same thing) so part of my instinct is to say that I chose to ahve kids, I didn;t ask for the disability.

But.

I'm largely becoming inclined to the idea that if we are taxed as individuals we should be considered as them throughout. If you each earn £40k then you don't need CB and won;t qualify for anything else anyway.

If one of you earns £40k but you both earned beforehand so your mortgage is high, or you get sick, or your kids do- then the eprson bearing that should count as an individual.

I'd pay higher taxes for that system absolutely.

Otherwise everything is seeming to be an attack on those whoa re trying: lower / middle earners, carers, whatever- and I am not quite sure what any of us did to deserve it.

I already know one eprson who spends her carers and CB on therapy for her child, therapy that is working. her dh earns just above the proposed thresholds. if she loses this she cannot afford the therapy: she has to make the choice of stop teh therapy or ask her dh to leave and claim it via burasry.

not nice.

And so far from what DC seemed to be selling.

riven, re HRP:

"Changes from April 2010 for parents and carers

Home Responsibilities Protection has been replaced for people reaching State Pension age on or after 6 April 2010.

From 6 April 2010, parents and carers are able to build up qualifying years through new weekly credits for the basic State Pension and additional State Pension. If you are a parent or carer, you will get a credit for each week in which you:

* are getting Child Benefit for children aged under 12
* are an approved foster carer
* are caring for at least 20 hours a week for people who are getting Attendance Allowance, the middle-rate or highest-rate care component of Disability Living Allowance, or Constant Attendance Allowance, or the need for care has been certified

There will be no limit to the credits awarded to parents and carers after April 2010, as long as you meet the qualifying rules.

If you reach State Pension age on or after 6 April 2010, complete tax years of Home Responsibilities Protection you have already built up before 2010 have been converted into qualifying years up to a maximum of 22 years. These qualifying years will also count towards bereavement benefits."

(from directgov)

If I am reading this correctly, I think this is actually better for carers than HRP, as there was that max of 22 years before. Now if you are a carer for longer than that you will continue to get credits towards pension etc.

OTOH, what will happen with SAHPs who have under-12s but will no longer get CB needs to be explained

(apols if this has already been pointed out)

That's a good point gramercy, it is a major issue in Japan.

While I know this isn't the case for all elderly people, my older relatives and their friends are very comfortably off, sitting in big mortgage-free homes on their final salary (mostly public sector) pensions and enjoying holiday after holiday after holiday... We sure as hell aren't so yes resentment is growing...

However, for us this is cheaper than a 1% increase in taxation, so I should be thankful for small mercies.

'Child benefit is not a means tested benefit. It is a benefit that recognises the increased cost of bringing up children during their dependent years' and crucially, that chioldren are essential to maintaining the country for the future 9the only other option being immigration), especially in an ageing society.

Kids grow into adults who pay tax: economists know this.

@ Riven, big changes in people's income need adequate lead-times so that everyone has chance to adjust. CTC disappears for many of us in January so that's the first phase to prepare for. Also, we'll find that 2013 coincides with other welfare reforms... various things happening simultaneously or sequentially leading progressively to the end result. In this case the bigger picture is 'The Universal Benefit'.

'OTOH, what will happen with SAHPs who have under-12s but will no longer get CB needs to be explained'

Oh good point!

And a scary one too.

It would be fairer to apply the tax increase across the board to higher rate payers, rather than applying a tax increase only to those with children, which is in effect what is happening here.

Please don't tell me the 15 hours nursery vouchers are going?

I've just seen on the news that banks are going to 'need' more taxpayers money as of next year Fuming does not even cover it!

link here

my heart sinks yet again. We keep trying but every year nah every month life just keeps getting more and more expensive. Work take and take, hours worked go up expenses of getting to work go up everything goes up all the time.

On Jeremy VIne Christna Odone seems to think that the £44,000ish earner is a minutely small group. And then there is GO's £70,000 comnet.

Can this be true?

I just want to know what the actual number of tax payers there are in the various bands (say of £5,000) are. The CO's of this world are working om the assumption that £100,000 is much more common. This boslters their argument

If 15% of taxpayers pay 40%, then presumably the number gets smaller and smaller as you go up the pay scale.

I am confused.

What this government really needs is to give the nation a carrot. We've got plenty of sticks already.

If we really are all 'in this together' then for goodness sake start painting a positive picture of what the future might look like in say 2020 when we've paid off the huge debts and our collective books are looking a bit more robust.

We need hope. Something to work for.

They need a new PR... George are you looking for a new consultant. I could do with a bit of extra work

The main thing that these cuts are highlighting is how excessive the cost of living is in this country and how even earning what should be a 'top' salary is not a passport to an easier home life at all.

Thing is most pensioners would argue that they scrimped and saved and did without when their kids were young. All the while paying taxes. I can see your point(s), some pensioners do lead very nice lives indeed. But not all. Not by a long, long way.

So did mine Riven. Before hopping off down to the golf course in their new luxury 4x4

GO just announced at the Tory Party Conference that he will put a hard cap limit the total amount of benefits any one family can receive and the maximum will be set at the level that an average family gets from going out to work. This limit excludes disability benefits which will not be capped.

On CB he has not said anything or if that is included in the capped amount of benefits.

Have emailed my MP to ask for his clarification. Am interested to see what he has to say.

'When will we see the benefits of our hard work?

You know when you pay your house insurance you can claim if you need it?

then.

We were the same as you: in fact at a few stages we had three jonbsbetween us. Thwen disability entered the equation wrt the children.

If the sdame happens to you that's when it is supposed to be available.

Surely teh issue is people getting it when they don't need, not people not geting it when they don't need?

I think noddy is right, and it largely comes down to the cost of property. If any government was prepared to tax property gains properly we might be onto something genuinely redistributive.

He has just said that CB should not go to higher rate tax payers.

He said that he wants to withdraw CB from households with a higher rate tax payer.

Molly, it's true - not all. Just like not all parents are scrounger who spend their child benefit on tennis lessons or playstation games.

They may have scrimped and saved when there kids were young but did not have to find £20k each for a University education, probably have a final salary scheme pension and far more job security than younger generations.

And they still whinge.

I wouldn't be so ticked off about this if it was going to be a fair cut ie based on HOUSEHOLD income.

DH is the sole earner in our house, for a variety of reasons, including v.nasty PND...plus he works stupidly long hours to get his salary...so is unable to help out at home with anything resembling frequency (not that I mind - you can't have it all)

It is unfair that this was a universal benefit, in some ways, although it is the money that keeps us in the black each month, because of our financial commitments.

What really grates is that many of our friends, who already have a higher NET income than us, as they a dual salary families and can access all sorts of credits and the like, plus getting £12,000 pa tax free within the household and keeping to a lower tax bracket, earn over £44,000 between them BUT WILL NOT LOSE THEIR CB...

How is this in any way shape or form FAIR?????

I think Child Benefit should be scrapped if they're going to muck about with it and added to the pre-existing means tested child related benefits/tax credits, then atleast it's fairer (IMVHO) for all.

Why should families who have a potential joint income of £86,000 get to keep their CB because neither one earns over £44,000, when a single parent earning £44,000 will lose their benefit, or a single income family of £44,000 will lose their benefit - it's a stealth tax on the "not quite wealthy enough"...

GGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

What this actually samcks of is a lack of original thiniing.

Do you know what would get me out to work?

being allowed to utilise the student childcare system (i've a year left to qualify for my profession) to hire in a Nanny who coudl deal with the boy's SN, when nurseries can't take them (there's nowhere locally offereing provision over 12 anyway and ds1 is almost 11).

Not more money than we would get, just a different way to spend it.

There's little point of me getting a job in tesco anyway (actually Oi would if I could find one that was only in school hours and let me off for appts, might be fun) becuase facts are fact: tesco work will not pay the childcare costs of two disabled kids.

Nit hand me that tiny amendment and I am going to finish my social worker qualifying (Already doen a degree and lots of work) amd be able to pay for the childcare properly alongside dh's income and not cost a penny.

but they don't think like that oh no. No bloody originality.

But CB apparently will still go to families with 2 earners just below the higher rate threshold? Yes they will have higher childcare costs - but not that much higher! A family like that could potentially be earning £88K gross & still get CB on top.

To quote "In some cases, this could result in families with an income of almost £88,000 receiving child benefit, while others on little more than half this sum lose out because one of the parents stays at home to look after the children.".........apparently because it would be too complicaed to do otherwise........"Mr Osborne acknowledged that his plan would produce "anomalies""...

Speaks for itself, doesn't it....yet again there are some winners whilst others are being kicked in the teeth.

P.S

I have no problem paying taxes to support those who are less fortunate than us for whatever reason - I really do like being a member of society...BUT I think you need to treat even financially successful individuals FAIRLY...

I realise I live up north in an area with low paid jobs, unfortunatley high property prices and cost of living, but wonder who all these people are that are earning just under the threshold. Over/just under and I would be living in luxury and not worrying about losing CB. Fact is that most people don't earn anywhere near the limit.

Does he really think people will tick the box on the ITR?

butterflymum

Yes, typically badly thought through and poorly presented - a cheap way of attempting to tackle what could have been a revolutionary reform to the benefit system with a REAL saving, not just a perceived saving that is going to upset a lot of family budgets in a grossely unfair manner.

Why not bin the freee milk and save an additional £50 million a year - as far as I know not many children drink it and schools and nurseries have to pay to store and manage it - could save a few more quid with not a great deal of loss. Oh no, that one created too much BAD publicity didn't it...

Equally, the kind of child care you need when you have a very young child is quite different to the kind of child care you need when you have an older child, so a single mother of an 18 month old will need more expensive child care than a couple with teenagers.

This really is nuttier than a nutty thing on nutty things day eating a Walnut Whip.

This is incredibly sexist. I'm fucked off.

Can we always rely on mens goodwill to dish out their wages??

FFS.

Incredibly sad right now.

Family X have two children, both parents work and Grandma provides the childcare, they earn 88K a year, they receive CTC and CB.

Family Y have two children and only the father works, they earn 45K a year, they get nothing.

Where is this fair at all?

There needs to be a lot more though put into childcare.

DS3 and ds1 will need it until they are 16 and fall under adult services. Most children in ds1's class now go to teh aprk for an hour until their mum gets home.

Address that, and people will get back to work through choice.

Oh forgot Family 3, Single mother who has worked very hard and is paying off student loans etc making 50K a year and has a load of childcare to pay from that, still gets nothing.

It's an arse, DH is on higher tax. So in theory a person who is the sole income provider is penalised if they earn £45k, but a family with a joint income of £80k will still get child benefit!!

abouteve - most people spend to their limits, just look at footballers' wives etc.

So, generally the more you got, the more you spend. We have a HUGE GREAT BIG mortgage, so over hald DHs' salary goes on just the mortgage, despite not living in a MASSIVE mansion (SE house prices...)

YES, we could have moved to a smaller house, but wanted the investment for our future / pension.

Now with the recession no-one is buying houses, we're tied in with a fixed rate mortgage (we are risk averse people) so the costs can't go down, plus we're in negative equity anyway so would be in a lose lose situation if we did try and downsize (the best way to save money)

We are screwed, CB keeps us in the black each month as bigger house = more bills, including council tax (which is totally fair) - unless I can get a job over the next couple of years, unlikely as I work in education and the likelyhood of a recruitement drive over the next few years is slim to insignificant.

Also - think about the amount of tax that you pay. For every £1.00 you earn over the higher threshold, you only get to keep 60p, minus the National Insurance, minus any pensionable contributions, which most higher earners make. This is why we need to start discussing WEALTH in terms of NET income, not GROSS income, as GROSS income is very, very misleading...

Plus we need to look at the MODE wage, not the AVERAGE (MEAN) wage, which is often skewed by VERY high earners (eg the premier league footballers...)

Will be interesting to see how much applications for flexible working increase by.

If you are just over HRT threshold may aswell apply for every fri pm off lose a few hours pay but keep CB.

This may well have been said earlier on the thread for which I apologise but surely redefining child benefit so it is payable for a lesser amount of years would be more sensible, and fair?

The early years are when childcare costs are highest. It is childcare costs which so often mean mothers are unable to afford to go back into the workplace (and therefore be paying tax) even if they wanted to.

So it would make greater economic sense to support more women to be financially able to work in the early years, but tapering CB as children get into their school years. Or have I got this completely wrong?

bb99 absolutely agree; it has to help those who need it and reward those who are successful as well.

But are there better ways of doing it than via the TC system?

I mean i hpsitals and schools were good enough that better off people didn;t feel they needed to pay silly money to send their child privaye (ewanting being different to a sense fo need after all)?

Does it have to be as blatantly financial as cash in hand?

CCL if there was a caveat for disabled kids who always need childcare (and assessed by recipt of DLA rather than some random social services visitor) then I would agree absolutely.

I only earn at maximum £6000 from CM and cleaning per year, but DH earns just over £44,000.

I've already told him that if he wants the kids savings to carry on, he will have to start paying it from 2013.

We don't have a joint account and I'm usually always in the red and have to 'ask' him for money.

He won't just do a standing order into my account

bb99.....goodness, free milk....not here (Northern Ireland)...our children have milk at school (primary), but we have to send in a cheque each term to cover the cost....think it works out at about 75p per child per week.

Reform of CB is long overdue...but reform should be appropriate and fair....so far, it doesn't look as if it will be.

Would be interesting to see how he calculates it, yes, given that "average household income" will include lots of single-person households (I read the other day that it's projected that 1 in 5 people born the same year as me will never have children at all).

I'm one Eve - once rent, utilities and council tax have been paid not much change out of 2K.

As I said I qualify for a small amount of hb so that must mean there is some official recognition that whilst my income looks good on paper it actually isn't.

And I top up rent slightly as hb is based on 2 beds (weekly HA of #240) whilst I live in 3 beds with tiny boxroom for ds2.

I have considered moving to 2 bed and I would do without. Once DS1 hits 16 we are considered eligible for 3 bed but they would prob kill each other if they shared.

Of course, that would need to be a caveat for sure.

Is this idea a complete nightmare administration wise? I wonder if they looked at it and discarded it? Would be VERY interested to know.

I may write to my MP...

I emailed my MP.

This amounts to a 5% tax increase for our family as we currently stand.

I would encourage everyone to write to their MP's. Join a political party. Make your voice heard. If enough people do it they can have influence.

should add that we will never qualify for social housing though but the local housing allowance for hb is based on their rules for how many beds you are entitled to and at what age.

Note to self...read the whole thread. At least we have two years before it comes into force.

The idea is that a HR taxpayer ticks the box to say that someone in the household claims CB for x children. Then it gets clawed back thro the tax system. However, GO wants people to stop claining it. He also says there will be checks on this 'honesty box'. PAYE codes will be adjusted to collect at source if the household is claiming.
If you then extended this to household income, rather than individual HR tax payers, you would need to means test. BR tax payers don't usually complete tax returns, so no box to tick.
In fact, how, unless you do a Tax Return, how will they know about HR tax payer's spouse's earnings? (DH does a tax return). Someone earnig 60k, no tax return, who is going t know if s/he is married/ has children?
I think this is going to be a very slapdash, resentment engineering thing.

butterflymum - yes free milk in some places...

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tories-move -swiftly-to-avoid-milksnatcher-tag-2047372.html

To quote again:

"He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "I looked at a way of doing this as simply as possible - and removing it from higher-rate taxpayers' households was the simplest way of doing it.""

...dear love him, he took the 'easy option'

That blog has given me the urge to buy gold brogues!

Going to look at it properly later.

errrrm that would be wrong thread! squirming bambimno

Maybe they're hoping that people will now rejoice when their (public sector) pay cut is announced and they are no longer a HRT payer.

Can't stand stupid rash supposedly cost saving exercises.

This idea and plan is UTTER nonsense.

It will be IMO completely impossible to administer - what about PAYE, how can you check the box for that?

Also DC1 is stepchild of current DH, DCs father definitely doesn't earn £44,000 per year, so will we still get CB for her, as legally DH has no financial obligation to DC, he does it out of love for us both???

Agree CB needs reform, but this is such a shoddy idea and a very unfair way of doing this.

What I don't get (unless more will be revealed) is why a grown up didn't tell GO that taking it away from family A on £80,000 because mummy stays at home/ daddy stays at home whereas giving it to Family B on £80,000 because both troll off to work was a bit unfair, and unlikely to change the electorates view that GO has the job becuase of who he knows not what he knows.

Have just emailed my MP to express my outrage concern. I understood the election manifesto was to support hard working famillies [hmmm]

If your MP is Conservative all contact details can be found on thier website
here although from the bbc website it sounds like it's a done deal.

If the Tories didn't get back in could a new government give it back?

Just thinking if it starts from 2013,it would be 2 years without it.

Just thinking surely it would be very unlikely that the Tories would get back in if that was the case. We'll loose best part of £200. I'd vote for anybody that would give that back,as I'm sure would most families hovering around that bracket.

Can't believe it's not on the 50% bracket

As pretty much everyone has pointed out, the problem with this isn't the principle (high earners shouldn't received benefits) but the implementation.

There are four issues with the implementation:
1. The cost of living is different across the country. In London a family with 3 kids earning £45k is not well-off, but in say Northern Ireland they'd be rich. This should be recognised by the benefit system.

2. Withdrawal should be tapered. If all benefit is withdrawn as someone crosses the threshold then it creates large negative tax rates. A family with 3 kids gets £1700 CB per year. This means that someone earning £43k would receive more after tax than someone earning £46k. Bonkers.

3. Generational unfairness. Those in their thirties and forties have high outgoings, so that although their incomes may look good, after paying for mortgage, childcare etc they are worse-off than their pensioner neighbours. Child benefit was a recognition of this. If it is to go, then universal benefits for pensioners (other than the basic pension) should also be means-tested.

4. Dual-earners/SAHP - actually here I think the distinction is justified due to the high cost of childcare.

I see they have not spoken to any Lib Dems. Seem to remember them voting to ring fence this (though Clegg obviously knew what was coming as he already mentioned they didn't need it!). He might as well put his blue tie on now!

Welfare cuts/reform, including axing CB has nothing to do with reducing the budget defecit - this is a Tory political move.

We don't need our CB. I would happily do without, if I felt that lower income families could get more. But that's not going to tbe the case is it?

Yes but the costs of the benefits changes are so high that there is a huge risk of them being effectively undunchangeable for any new Government.

Worth aiming for though....

Roastchicken - re dual incomes - yes there are childcare costs, but with this system, a family can take home (after tax) THIRTY THOUSAND POUNDS more than us and still get child benefit, but we are going to lose three thousand pounds a year.

SAHMs are in the minority so let's target them.

FFS.

grumpypants, re "Someone earnig 60k, no tax return, who is going t know if s/he is married/ has children?"

everyone paying higher rate has to complete a self-assessment return every year (DH used to but hasn't for years, I can't remember what information it asks for though!)

Lily - how will you lose 3K per year?

SAHPs - the invisible, unheard minority, once more forgotton and brushed aside...

See the current government, supporting families in all their shapes and sizes...

It seems so unfair that a household with one earner loses CB at £44k, but a family with 2 earners keeps it to £83K!!!!!!!

Also, if you have a child under 12, will you be able to keep HRP until the child reaches that age, even if you no longer receive the cash?

It's annoying/painful to deal with the drop in income, but quite another thing to replan many years of NI contributions.

SCL, I was thinking about social housing as an alternative for you. The remaining housing association properies around here are really nice, a lot of the original housing stock was sold off.

I still stand by what I said. If I earned £40K a year I would be very very happy indeed. I am working poor and it's getting worse even though I have a 'good job' as opposed to working in Maccy D's/Tesco. Don't get me wrong not slagging off people who are at this limit or who work for the companies mentioned. I am [jealous] of the higher rate tax payers.

4 children

Last time the conservatives were in power it took them a few years to think up the poll tax and VAT on fuel.

The coalition have come up with a riot worthy barmy tax policy within weeks.

It's not just hitting SAHP's though is it? Families where both mother and father work and therefore have to deal with childcare costs are also losing their CB, and childcare vouchers to boot.

This makes it harder for women to work which in turn means they will pay less tax and employ less childcare, who also will pay less tax. Well done George, your grasp of basic economics is quite astounding.

sorry, that was to feelliketweedledee - 4 children = 3k per year in child benefit.

I've worked out that if we lose CB it's equivalent of paying another 4% in tax or our net income going down by 6%.

Bet the Tories wouldn't be in such a hurry to raise taxes across the board would they?

Ponders - really? I thought you could be taken off self assessment once your affairs were pretty simple. (Note - have not practised for several years)

CCL - applause for you and your tax knowledge. Please get in touch with George and let him know...

The risk of this debate is that it can turn into a version of the 'four yorkshire men' sketch where we all compete for how hard done by we are and it becomes divisive (all to the benefit of the ruling classes). I am as guilty of this as anyone, and I do feel 'got at' by the state but I am aware it is all relative.

Despite the fact dh income puts him in hrt he is still a wage slave, he does not have control over his destiny or his wages, we are at the whims of the market like everyone else. The government is fiddling with piddling amounts to pay off debts that are based on confidence and credit ratings decided by the very people who put us in this financial crisis in the first place - free market capitalism, corporate banking, the value of the housing market - all these things are constructs based not on gold bullien but our belief in them - a bit like tinkerbell. Maybe we should stop clapping and start again, with trading goods and services for food and shelter .... anyone want to join me in a commune in wales {grin]?

Anyway must put the kettle.

I don't see how its making it harder for women to work. Is anyone seriously saying that two HRT earners are going to be affected so much by losing say £20 or £30 a week?

The thing with it being on one income is it does protect the low income workers like me.

My peanut wages would bring us just over so I'd have to give up work. It would be pointless working for nothing which in effect loosing CB would cause. This would be a blow as my old higher paying career is on the rocks due to having the dc.

This is why I think the 40% bracket stinks as yes it's unfair 2 incomes keep it but on the other hand those of us on tiny wages want to be able to work.

If it was on 50% it wouldn't be an issue.

"If it is to go, then universal benefits for pensioners (other than the basic pension) should also be means-tested."

I would imagine these are the next thing to be announced.

Roll on 2015.

Ponders. You don't necessarily have to complete a tax return if you are a higher rate tax payer. It changed a few years ago. So either it will have to be reintroduced - expense. Or they will have to rely on honesty.

Lilybolero - you're right. The current proposal is badly thought out, but it would be appropriate to have a different threshold for two working parents, due to the lack of government support for childcare. But I guess not double - even £10k higher for household income would be better. I don't get why they don't just tax it as that would reduce some of the problems.

Its also truly dreadful for working lone parents. But I guess the conservatives don't care about them.

I can't see how the proposal will survive in its current form.

I think the universal credit will most likely affect pensioners as well.

Certainly, my aprents don;t ecxpect a heating fuel allowance this eyar and theya re not on a large income at all; dad works part time and their pensions vanished under a legal loophole.

oh really, grumpypants? I was making a sweeping assumption (as usual ) based this on the fact that DH did get one as long he was on higher rate (he had a company car at the time & that made the difference IIRC)

His affairs were incredibly simple, he probably could have asked to stop doing it but most years he ended up with a small rebate for one reason or another - eg higher rate relief on pension contributions/charity donations - so it seemed worth doing.

I'm probably wrong (as usual )

You know I dont think this will asurvive either

I think its not meant to

I think by hitting almsot every household they are trying to bury the mess that is universal credit <<cynic>>

Can not believe that this is being done against higher rate tax codes rather than means tested.

I'm not against losing my Child Benefit IF EVERYONE is having to take a hit some how with spending cuts, however this is just such an unfair method of calculating who loses it.

Single parent on £44k loses benefit.
Family where one parent is on 44k lose benefit.
Family where both parents earn just below higher tax rate threshold ie £43k each = £86k in total, keep benefit.

How is this fair?! It is astoundingly unbelievable!!

Mila, and that is the reason it is fair to only apply it to HRT earners not household income. I cannot understand why women living off their partners income therefore not working can be up in arms about it. If it makes you short and you really need the money go out and earn it.

Because abouteve not everybody can.

That simple.

People can't find cvhildcare around shifts, or have caring roles, or are sick themselves.

If only the world was as yous w it. That would be nice.

Im just curious how much money will be saved by scrapping the CB? i think i heard GO say 1bn a year ? so how much is it going to cost when the ,say , 1 million people lose their jobs in the up coming cuts ,both public and private ( RBS slashing thousands of jobs ,other banks too i imagine ) and start claiming benefits . If we do a quick sum ,i imagine not a great deal will be saved . Given that there are mutterings about the double dip recession coming round to bite us in the bum soemtime soon and other mutterings about the banks needing a top up ,up to £50bn mark , i think this will be just a way of getting rid of benefits ,that many actually need

to Ponders.
The problem then is that only HR tax payers completing tax returns will definitely lose the Child Benefit. How would you find out from other people without meanstesting or questionning all those in receipt currently?
If A is claiming it now, and B (partner) is a HR tax payer, who is going to ask A or B about their affairs?

Presumably employees will need to disclose the information to their employers, who will administer it through tax codes/PAYE (meanwhile rubbing their hands in glee as employees on £45,000 all request pay cuts).

For those who are self-employed on the other hand there are probably numerous ways to avoid it.

Lily - jesus that's hard luck So the Tories want more chav brats to be born and receive their benefits but middle class children? We must put a lid on them.

Look at the ideology of it, woman receives benefit, man offsets or declares it against his tax return, it's ridiculous.

Is everyone who isn;t middle class a chav then?

<<offended>>

Actually, if this was fair, I might be able to get over it. As for abouteve I can't even begin to address your 'question'.

Feel - your charming post re chav brats proves my point made earlier on that cutting CB will result in vitriol against those who are even worse off than those on 44K a year.

abouteve - "living off their partners income"?
Some families have a household income.

I am a chav Sancti - I am as common as muck.

Above the CB threshold so according to everyone this must mean i am middle class

Getorf, I'm afraid your point has been proved several times already on this thread and I'm sure there is plenty more to come.

so allabouteve -(great film btw) - while I am at home caring for pre-school children, cooking and cleaning etc. I am a 'sponger' - but if I went to work and employed a nanny, cleaner and cook - I would not be a sponger - ok glad to get that cleared up cheers.

abouteve - Are you Xenia's sister?

It's not difficult to earn £40 a week doing a night job, work a weekend shift etc. Health permitting, of course.

I wish they wouldn't harp on about couples earning £86,000, this is not the income of an average family.

I'm rather scepticle about this. I reckon they we sneak it back to theses HRT payers. It doesn't make sense for a conservative government to do this, labour yes. I'm suspicious it's just to make them look fair.

Thedollshouse - Lol, lol.
Xenia must be at the Tory party conference...

Just noticed that the first person giving opinion on BBC news website is retired and in favour of cutting CB but says

"I don't think they should cut the winter fuel allowance though. Why? Because we have paid penal tax rates on our income for years and years and he has got to be conscious of the promise that "we will look after you when you are old". Bus passes should be kept too."

He obv has missed out that they also made promises about CB...

4 yorkshiremenish, but I'm nothing like Xenia. I'm a single mum and had to work full time when my baby was 3 months old. Got no help whatsoever apart from CB. Things improved when labour got in, help was there. Work still but earn less than half of £44K so just coming at this from a prosepective of the lower paid.

Erm, maybe my partner is working evenings and weekends already (he is actually) and I am needed for appts and just to sleep from caring all night in the day? Just a thought.....

Mined I am trying to find a job to fit around it, just no luck so far.

Getorf we must ahve a different definition of chav. For me it's an offense term about people with no life aims and a certain subculture. you on the other hand are just average and nice. And I am very WC and not a chav.

Capitalism needs children to be born from all classes and to fill all levels of jobs. In fact it needs a surplus of workers to function so it has a power over workers.

""If it is to go, then universal benefits for pensioners (other than the basic pension) should also be means-tested.""

I doubt it - the proportion of pensioners that this would affect (hence the number of votes they would lose) would be higher. Therefore, this is a higher risk strategy.

As usual this seems completely unfair. A single parent, working full time on 40k, having to pay a mortgage (perhaps in the south-east) for full-time childcare gets no tax credits or child benefit what so ever.

It does not even reflect family income - I am a basic rate taxpayer with a good but pt job. DH has his own company and therefore can choose to pay himself exactly up to the 40% barrier (which he does already). We have an income of around 70k, not in the southeast and would still qualify. . FWIW I would rather the money I get went to getting a family out of the poverty trap but all this 40k and you're rich crap really gets up my nose. They also seem to miss that you can have a pretty low income and still be wealthy, for example if you have large amounts of inherited wealth, for example.

The problem is that people listen to the TV and think that 40K is a lot but how rich you are depends on your outgoings. I'd like to see Osborne and his family live in London on that.

cuts have to be made somewhere to start to reduce our debt or the country will never get out of this "era of austerity".
i think HRT payers are a good place to start. i will lose my child benefit but am happy to and would rather i lose all than see a situation where everyone loses some.
whichever way the threshold was worked out would create winners and losers. they have tried to organise it in a way that makes it cost efficient to manage.

To everyone who voted Tory - well done - NOT! . Poor old Barbara Castle must be turning in her grave today.

damn.

will be interesting to see whether the grey vote is sufficiently powerful to prevent reductions in winter fuel etc. Why not take that away from higher tax payers at the very least?

They can't get rid of winterfuel - Nick Robinson reckons they have to keep that because 'Call-Me-Dave' himself said they would. Osborne and Clegg said they would keep child benefit, but they don't care about not letting them take the flak.

"I cannot understand why women living off their partners income therefore not working can be up in arms about it. If it makes you short and you really need the money go out and earn it."

Many women would love to go out and earn money if:

1) The costs of childcare weren't more than they could earn
2) If good quality childcare were available that would fit around the hours their job demands
3) If there were somebody available to care for their disabled child
4) If it were possible for them to find a job that fits in with demands of school.

As I am sure you know, sometimes because you have children, sometimes, for some people it is that little bit more difficult to go out and get a job, and if a person can get a job, their household costs are more because they have to pay for childcare (which as we know, for most people, is paid out of taxed income).

That is why child benefit is quite a cool benefit really. You can tax people according to income, but ensure that at times in their life when they need a little bit more support you can help them out.

In the meantime as GO says, if people living outside the south east are finding it so fabulously easy to live on less than £30K, they can always donate their child benefit to the government.

they have got to start means testing pensioners. actually the word makes me laugh. 60 year olds, fit as fiddles, living it up on mortgage free houses going on mega holidays "we worked all our lives for this"... now sitting on mega equity in their houses

having enjoyed:
with your mortgage interest tax relief
free education including university for your children
low childcare costs as wives could afford to stay at home

wtf!?

I half agree Rokers

Indeed I remeber thinking this myself but there has to be a midway.

Why should a family with two earning just below cut off get it when someone with a partner earning £1 over and no earning partner have it cut?

That's what befuddles me.

I get that tehya re trying to prtotect the less well off but this si clumsy.

carers has gone same way- used to be available to all meeting a set of criteria, under universal credit i'll still get it as low income but middle class people (or just anyone with an earningpartner) won't any more.

Personalkly, i;d ahve kept tax credits, chucked an extra X per child onto that and then it could trickle off as TCs do and tkae into account factors such as family size etc. I might even start the trickle at 5 in fact to reflect earning barriers before school age.

So we are told that we must tackle the benefit dependency culture in our society, who are they talking about middle & high earners?
How on earth do these new measures they are bringing in tackle the very root of benefit dependency culture in the UK?
They may save a few million pounds by targeting the working man/woman earning over a certain wage but I can't see that this measure to stop child benefit to working people will have any affect on the benefit dependable people they are talking about in the first place in our society.

Home Responsibilities Protection and it's replacement .....

so, how will the proposed changes to CB affect this.....think others have questioned it, but equally many may have overlooked that loss of CB could have a knock on effect to this too.

Youknow abouteve, there's this idea that not working is a luxury.

Actually it isn;t, always.

It can be very boring and isolating being at home when it's not chosen. Certainly it is slowly destroying my mental health, if I didn;t have study (independent, can;t even make a 7pm class now!) I'd be really quite ill I think.

What theis government needs to focus on is who ahs a choice and who doesn't, and whether they can help to get them a choice. Becuase most people do want to contribute financially, certainly once the kids are in school.

Home Responsibilities Protection and it's replacement .....

so, how will the proposed changes to CB affect this.....think others have questioned it, but equally many may have overlooked that loss of CB could have a knock on effect to this too.

"they have got to start means testing pensioners. actually the word makes me laugh. 60 year olds, fit as fiddles, living it up on mortgage free houses going on mega holidays "we worked all our lives for this"... now sitting on mega equity in their houses"

I couldn't agree more.

"It's not difficult to earn £40 a week doing a night job"

Might be more difficult to find somebody to look after your children who will charge you less than £40 a week for their labour.