To think the UK unfairly taxes families?

The difference is the ease of broken relationships. Previously, if you left your husband you paid for yourself whilst now they expect the tax payer to fund their choices. This fuels that option and people choose relationships with little thought of the long term.

Why, if they leave should they get government help? They should get the same help a long term single person gets. We have a two tier society of single people.

I believe the two child benefit cap should stay. What should happen is increased tax breaks for those in long term employment. Not benefits.

The poll tax was the epitome of a regressive tax so it was very 'fair' to the wealthy widow rattling around in a mansion. Meanwhile, the family who were forced to live frugally, three generations together, say 6 people paid 6 times as much. It was literally a punishment for the poor who were trying to live frugally, within their means.
With regard to the single person, it depends. Should the wealthy widow in the huge mansion have a larger discount than the poor widow in a tiny flat? That's clearly not fair.
I agree with @GertrudePerkinsPaperyThing's point about CB for single households though. It's particularly unfair to those parents who have been widowed at a young age and have no possibility of CM.

Poll tax was grossly unfair. Two pensioners paying the same as couples with school age children and using a fraction of the services. Anyway it was enough of a disaster for it never to be on the table again.

@Bushmillsbabe

We were in a different world when the poll tax was introduced. Prior to its introduction rates were included in rent. Once the poll tax was introduced renters had to pay this significant additional charge on top of their rent. Of course landlords didn’t reduce the rent to reflect the fact that they were no longer paying rates.

So homeowners and landlords either the same or better off (especially landlords)

Renters, all without exception, worse off to a significant degree. People just didn’t have the money to pay it.

This was before the “buy to let” market existed. If you rented it wasn’t through choice. You were already poor as if people had the money in those days they always bought. This is what Mrs Thatcher tapped into with RTB.

i do think it potentially could be revisited now as we are not moving from a situation where “rates” were inclued in rent. Everyone now pays their own council tax whether owner or renter.

I agree with you. Poll tax, which was based I think on numbers in a household, was much fairer. You could have a multi generational household with several adults paying not much more than a single adult household. A house with say 4 adults and 6 children will use a lot more council services than a house with 1 adult and 1 child. More cars on the roads which councils maintain, create more rubbish for council to collect, need more school places for council to fund. But there was a huge revolt against that!

They pay tax on their pensions. Are you genuinely too thick to google this?

That's patently not correct though, is it? It's not how it works here, or on the continent. Tax is paid post retirement in the UK and on the continent, it is NI that is not, (currently) paid post retirement in the UK. But the equivalent social security contributions are also not paid by the retired in France, Italy or Germany and, I suspect, everywhere else on the continent.

Not only that, if anything its not a families being treated unfairly, but single people, of whom the retired make up a significant proportion, due to being widows/widowers. Many of the costs of living are fixed whether there are one, two or more people living at an address. Yet single people don't get anything to compensate for that. Even council tax, which does attract some discount, is proportionally much more expensive if you a a single person household. Most utilities are also not half the cost if there's one person not two, and neither are insurance, rent or many other things.

The Government is failing you all by taxing away growth, so people are worse off. The rise in single person households is also another reason why people feel their standards of living are not the same as previous generations. People are single for longer, and often widowed for much longer, and therefore living on a single income not two for more of their lives.

So did I. Big deal.
This is not a 'tit for tat situation. Some of the comments on here are really juvenile and unpleasant.

Pensioners should pay the same rate of tax as everyone else because there is absolutely no reason for them to give special treatment to the wealthiest group within the UK population.
Financial assistance with childcare, which is provided to a much greater extent in many other countries compared to the UK, is to encourage both parents to work, pay tax and contribute to society by providing services. It is also to encourage younger people to have children, which is of benefit to the whole of society. Both these groups are of major benefit to the pensioners.

This.

I’m so sick of all this budget manoeuvring. Publish the fucking thing and be damned!

Nail on the head. Benefits/tax incentives should be aimed at potentially working people so that they can work or work more to grow the economy.

Other countries give tax incentives for "work" such as for parents, commuting costs, work clothing, etc. The UK is a bit of a loner in not encouraging people to work!

Why? I wouldn’t expect every member of any age group to have similar aims. I’m never going to want the same things as the majority of my age group who voted for Brexit and want a Tory or Reform government.

I would expect them to have similar aims.

Why would you expect everyone over a certain age to think the same thing?

I’m hoping the Gov is having a better quality debate than this thread which utterly lacks forward thinking. Pensioners even up against other pensioners. People should understand that the Gov didn’t save up all their contributions over the years, they are relying on this generation to pay the bills - we need more workers to subsidise the job workers and that isn’t going to happen, it might be time to jump shipof you have the cash.

You sound like one one those FB posts. SHARE IF U AGREE

Why? What logical reason is there for not funding childcare? Other than “because you had to” 🙄

Well my mum went to work full time and she paid for child care / maybe she was a wrong’en but she paid out our housekeeper a pittance / pocket money you might say, nowadays she’d had to pay minimum wage, so much easier back then to under pay someone. She was ri to er happy or desperate as she worked for our family for nearly 30 years.

We could increase the number of skilled and experienced working people contributing significantly to the economy if professionals weren’t able to afford to retire quite as early.

Removing NI and increasing Income Tax to compensate would help with this (families would benefit as their reduction in NI would be more than their increase in Income Tax), as well as keeping the tax allowance from pension contributions at the standard rate irrespective of earnings, meaning they take longer to grow their pension pot. The typical standard rate payer wouldn’t be affected!

The highly productive 50 and 60 experienced professionals would work for a few years longer on average with a massive boost to the economy as a result!

Btw, I’d be exactly one of those who’s be adversely affected by such a move, so it’s definitely not coming from a place of envy!

Agreed. Those living on the State Pension alone wouldn’t be affected by the change as they don’t (or barely) pay tax anyway!

I’m sure many pensioners did have it hard when they were growing up and many do today, but on average the disparity between the wealth of the young and old has never been greater… The older generation is (on average) VASTLY more wealthy!

Skewing the tax regime to further benefit them disproportionately is a shameful unfairness that has massive negative impacts on society… For one, we are facing demographic population collapse because couples can’t afford a place of their own until they’re much older.

I agree. Go to work. Pay for your own childcare. I had to.

You can have this instead so that you can reminisce about how tough things were when people couldn't afford gadgets.

Well said.

Other differences between now and those "good old days when one income could support a household":

Very few people had flown on an airplane or holidayed abroad
Very few people attended university
Dining out/takeaway was rare - like maybe 3-4 times a year
Food was much more limited in quality and quantity; snacking and ready availability of soft drinks, crisps etc. was not the norm, let alone purchasing bottled water. We were always pleasantly surprised on the very seldom occasions mum would split a couple bottles of coke and small bag of crisps among us while watching television.
Few gadgets. I remember in the 70s dad bringing home an electronic calculator and literally the neighbours came over to marvel at it. Now you can buy them in the poundshop at 1/10th the size of that one
Pets did not receive human-level medical care
Kids and teens did not have myriad paid "activities," sport or lessons
Clothing was far more scant, I recall having 2-3 pairs of shoes and we weren't poor
My mother never allowed us to get anything when the ice cream van went through the neighbourhood; when I asked why as an adult she said "we simply could not afford it. We literally didn't have the spare change." And my dad had a decent job at Ford.
Eyeglasses were very costly and if they broke, you wore them fixed with cello tape until the next year. And everyone was very upset; they were treated like treasured items.

Furniture was sparse and secondhand.

Those and other frugalities were the reality of having a one-earner SAHM household in the 60s/70s. People's lives barely resembled the way even lower-income people expect to live nowadays.

We used the library, wore second-hand clothing, mum pulled us to the shops in a wagon because she didn't have a car. Kids amused themselves and weren't entrtained every moment, and were expected to contribute with chores. It is quite possible to "survive on one income" in just that way today, but people aren't willing to deprive themselves to that extent.

Exactly. Some people seem to think purely in terms of income or respond with jealousy to the fact that UC exists without giving any thought to how much basic essentials such as housing, etc cost and how costs rise considerably if two working parents are necessary.

And there were certainly more SAHMs in the past. The stats bear this out and they don't even take into account hours worked, which are much higher now.

A lot of people are confused with how much disposable income today's younger generations have.

Bills & housing costs make a huge difference

"In 1993, the average householder paying for either rent or a mortgage, alongside electricity, gas, telephone, TV licence and car insurance would spend £382.39."

"Adjusted for inflation, this is £570 less than what consumers are paying for basic bills now."

There were 3 (then 4) channels on the telly and no-one had a mobile phone, internet, ate out, went for coffee, had netflix etc

Why would you have things that didn't exist though?
People did go out, did buy beauty products, went to pubs etc. None of this things were new in the last decade.