To think women with 3+ kids should pay less taxes

We don't need incentives to produce more people in the world, it's over populated enough

Sharing our the worlds population and encouraging migration and education so migrants can became productive members of the economy would be a far better practice.

Investing in mental and physical health services and adapting work so that currently unproductive members of society are able to access work and become financially beneficial to society.

More babies are not the answer

Just the opposite. The world has too many people, so we need to incentivise people to have fewer children, not more.

However, I do think childcare should be tax deductible.

Having children is choice, no one needs to keep on breeding especially they can't afford it

No I don't someone's choice to have three children subsided. Better use would be after school care for all schools and all children

No, terrible idea.

I don’t think a tax break would do much. Tax breaks give more to the wealthy who could have more kids if they wanted in most cases. I do agree that it’s better for countries to support and train their own populations so they’re not causing societal issues and brain drains in other countries.

I think we need more affordable childcare as it’s so difficult having more than one child in nursery. I have an 2.5 age gap which is often seen as ideal but not for nursery. Often the advice is to space out children and wait until one goes to school but that will lead to smaller families as some just don’t go back to having children. There are lots of factors at play that make it hard to address.

It's a good idea and is already the case in a lot of other countries. But Mumsnet will hate it 😂

I have 4 kids - my choice, my responsibility. My DH and I work full time and received no tax credits but that’s fair enough because, and I can’t stress this enough, I chose to have 4 wonderful children and I don’t expect others to pick up the tab.

It’s interesting that it is not ONLY low birth rate, it’s the wider generational spacing - so if my great gran had 2 kids average maternal age 25, then those kids had their own 2 kids average maternal age 25, then 50 years or so after great gran got married there are 8 great grandkids and two working age grandchildren.

Whereas nowadays you might have your first kid age 35 and your second aged 40. And ditto as the generations progress.

So maybe you want to support YOUNG people to be financially able to afford kids rather than waiting until they can afford it age 40, as then a woman aged 80 has maybe only 4 young grandkids and 2 adult children, as opposed to being a great gran with 8 great-grandchildren, 4 adult grandkids and two adult kids.

Every KS1 child in state school gets free school meals. regardless of parents' income. Everyone gets healthcare and education, and for her, that everyone includes 3 dependents.

You get healthcare, education, school meals, child benefit.
Well plenty of parents don't get school meals or child benefit at all. And everyone gets healthcare, and if you were brought up in Britain everyone got education. Not sure OP is really rolling in all these benefits at all.

Would you like a 4 bed house as well?

I'm not in favour of the ponzi scheme approach, and I do think that a gradually declining population is generally desirable.

But why do you think that "after a few generations it will even out?" The maths doesn't give you that at all. It can only be based on a pure guess that people will suddenly start having 2.1 children again for some reason.

You get healthcare, education, school meals, child benefit. Anyone with 3+ kids is already taking out more than they are putting in. Yes, we will need more migration as time goes on to replace an aging population. There are plenty of people who want to come.

The Nazis did that.

Or more scroungers?

I think it pretty crazy as a nation to encourage large-scale immigration from other counties vs actually just making it more affordable for people to have families.

I’m not averse to immigration, but it’s a pretty depressing outlook for the UK to promote immigration from third world countries over helping our own people to flourish.

Very right wing governments like France?

The UK is the only government in the G20 where someone supporting 2/3/4/5 people on a single income pays exactly the same tax as someone with no dependents (apart from the transferable marriage allowance which is very limited).

You may feel that this is obviously correct, and that having children is a purely personal decision which should no more concern the taxman than any other expensive hobby. But the other approach is not an extremist position: it's the norm.

No. The world is over populated enough as it is. What we need is a slowly declining birth rate across the globe. Yes this will create difficulties for a few generations as we have more old than young people. But after a few generations it will even out. Otherwise the human race becomes a huge pyramid scheme.

In the (European) country I come from, you have “large family” status if you have 3+ children, with additional benefits from 5+. This is not only reflected on taxes (minimally) but on administration fees, cost of extra-curriculars (as most are state-run), public transport eg train fares, and a long list of etc. There is no such thing as child benefit though, for anyone. 3+ children gets you a 50% discount on those state fees whilst 5+ children makes it free of charge. So for example in gymnastics / music / ballet schools, children from a family with 5 siblings don’t pay anything to attend.

Childcare is also state-run and funded from the age of 4 months, although the newly improved parental leave system means most families can stay at home with the baby at least until the 8-9 month mark. It cannot be solely the mother though (unless a single parent).

Edit to add - the birth rate is still falling though. One of the fastest dropping rates in Europe.

Environmentally speaking we need to breed less not more.

We certainly will need a strategy for the aging population but I’m not convinced more people is it.

We can if we fill the workforce gaps with immigrants who are hsppy to come here and very willing to work hard and pay lots of taxes.

Boosting the birth rate is only desirable if you want to clamp down on immigration but can't because you need the immigrants for your workforce.

Therefore the extra babies generated by such an initiative would be destined for low pay low status jobs that currently recruit heavily from other countries.

Your starting point is that immigration is bad. I don’t agree. Birth rates in the global west are falling, that means populations can move around from overcrowded countries to come here. That’s fine. Overall global population needs to fall.

It quite literally is a bad thing.

We cannot afford to support our elderly population if people aren’t having kids at replacement level or above.