Childcare reform: what about parents not on benefits?

@ScruffyGiraffe I think the point you're missing is that the vast majority of single parent households are not ones where the absent parent is dead or (as in your case) has committed horrendous crimes which prevent them from earning or having any future contact with their children. And legislation has to be made to work for the 'majority' scenarios, not the extreme ones like yours.

Most absent parents are perfectly able to continue working. They absolutely should (along with the 'present' (for want of a better word!) pay for their children. The main problem here is that many don't. And many actually go on to have more kids in a new household as if it's some god given right.

You say the single parent only has 24 hours for working/ caring etc and a dual household has 48. But your proposal ignores the fact that unless the absent parent is dead (or in prison etc) they have the other 24 hours. There are still 2 parents who between them have 48 hours. The fact they choose not to live together any more is their business. They are still parents - you don't divorce your children! And many couples work in this way quite successfully- they accept that they still have responsibility for funding the children they chose to have.

I don't see why parents should be taxed more favourably if they split up. And as many of us have pointed out, there are probably more negative impacts on women as a whole if you start going down this route.

You can defo get 30 hours with certain disability benefits. You need to look into it further because if you're affected by health issues bad enough you can't look after your children you will be entitled to the 30 hours childcare:

The main issue here where I live is actually finding childcare. Lots of places (including my childminder) closed during the lockdowns and never reopened. The remaining places are now packed out. Anywhere worth going has a waiting list. There is no one collecting from DS3's school now and no after school club provision. Moving school is not an option as a) other than lack of after school care the school is brilliant and I don't want to move him and (b) the morning routine is really well worked out due to breakfast club being available. I have to work around school pick ups in the afternoons and I'm lucky that the nature of my job and my employer allows me to. For people who can't this would be a serious barrier to work.

Am not underestimating the difficulty in claiming child support ,but I do think a much better rate of recovery could be achieved

I also don’t actually think that’s fair and all people should be treated as individuals for income. Why should my tax allowance be cut in half just because there’s two people earning in my household?

Because that's basic logic? Because households are economic units, because that's how tax functions in the majority of sensible economies, because it's fair, because household expenses are per household not per person and obviously are lower per adult if there are two adults... how does this need explaining?! Is your mortgage or childcare bill twice as much if you live with your partner? Or your gas and electricity bill? No? Then why should you get to earn twice as much tax free as somebody paying for all of that from one salary? Why do you think benefits are calculated on the basis of household incomes not individuals? The only reason why taxes aren't is because that wouldn't benefit the Government, and because as your comments have shown nobody cares about the impact because it is women and children who are the ones who are penalised.

Wowzers, I wasn’t arguing just saying that we are taxed the same

But whatever your household income is, if I earn the same for my household, our households will still have vastly differerent incomes after tax in the current system: mine being far lower.

So you benefit from cheaper living costs by living together. You have 48 hours per day to spend on earning money/ career progression/ spending time with your children and reducing childcare costs by doing so (if you have children). A single parent has only 24 hours per day to do these things so will have higher costs than you and then even if they earn the same as your household will be taxed more than you are.

Anybody who thinks that is ok is mad, frankly.

And as a PP said, it's very depressing that people would rather scrap over division of crumbs than recognise the basic unfairnesses of the system (even those that, if rectified, would not benefit them personally) and campaign to get these things changed, for everyone's benefit. I highlighted many other issues not just about single parents but tax reform in general earlier in the thread. So many people's refusal to accept basic logic and fairness about an issue just because it doesn't affect you personally is, in my opinion, a large contributor to how we've ended up in such a mess as a country. Scrabbling over selfish personal gain and no willingness at all to look at the wider picture and what has been proven to work in other countries and take a long-term view in terms of productivity and what will benefit everyone in the longer term.

I should not have been wasting time trying to argue it, I know nobody cares about single mothers and this thread has shown it so plainly, with one or two exceptions. Same old attitudes, same old prejudices, same old "but it would be so unfair to me if we stopped penalising them and making them pay more than me and my husband do!". 🙄🤯

I do think it would actually disadvantage women though. What you’re saying effectively is that all single households get the double allowance, then when two people form a two income household they lose their own tax allowance and get one shared between them. I would feel very uncomfortable with that as a woman.

I also don’t actually think that’s fair and all people should be treated as individuals for income. Why should my tax allowance be cut in half just because there’s two people earning in my household?

I live with DP and we are both taxed separately, I pay the same amount of tax as I would if I was single 🤷🏼‍♀️

Tbh I feel it's outdated thinking @ScruffyGiraffe that married women are all assuming single mums are somehow feckless and undeserving. That's nonsense

Well if you are arguing that a lone parent should be continued to be taxed more than your household is taxed on the same income, despite them trying to do what you do in 24 hours per day not 48, then you are absolutely entrenching disadvantage and penalising people who are already having to do far more than you, without a higher proportion of their income being taken for tax on top. Effectively that is lone parent households like mine subsidising households with two parents. If you think that's ok and fair then you clearly do think we are less "deserving" - even to keep the same proportion of our own earned income that you are allowed to keep! - and I am not sure what else to say to you.

It would indeed. In my case contact was ceased when said father threatened my life amongst other violence. Everything therefore went through child maintenance. Allegedly they can't touch his money as he apparently doesn't even get benefits. Yet strangely he's managed to get an engagement ring for his next victim. In the last two years I have had probably £500 if even from him towards my child's upbringing. Doesn't stretch far when the child has disabilities which make it difficult for me to find employment. They don't intend to review this until October apparently 🙄 I agree that the state are useless at holding people like him accountable.

I'm not comparing two people going to work to one person going to work. I am saying that all households should pay the same amount of tax on the same amount of earnings. That it is unfair to tax a lone parent more on the same income as another household that has two adults in it. That anybody could argue against this is frankly mind boggling.

Completely agree with all of this.

You absolutely cannot compare two people going to work all week though, with one person going to work all week. People need to be taxed as an individual.

And most people are not single parents because the other parent is dead or is such a horrendous criminal that they cannot ever earn money or have anything to do with their kids again! Most absent parents are perfectly able to continue earning and should continue to pay for the children they chose to have!

Tbh I feel it's outdated thinking @ScruffyGiraffe that married women are all assuming single mums are somehow feckless and undeserving. That's nonsense

I haven't suggested that at all though.

Well yes. I do think it is unfair, and a single allowance per household would make it fair for everyone as it could be split as they see fit. Why on Earth should any household get to keep more of their earnings just because of the particular split of childcare and working they've decided between them?

Single parents obviously have neither benefit in the current system: don't get to utilise the double tax free allowance etc that dual income households have, and also have high childcare costs when single earner households have free childcare with one parent at home. So effectively we're taxing the most on the households with the lowest capacity to work and pay, that have only one adult and only 24 hours per day not 48 to do both of those things. That is regressive and ridiculous.

You would not be "penalised" for earning on a par with your husband if what I've proposed was implemented. It's just that other people would not be taxed more than you are for the same household income.

“Being taxed as an individual, on what I as a woman earn in my own right, and not being penalised just because I earn on a par with my husband, is not something I'd want to see changeD”
Totally agree

No. I'm proposing that the same tax allowances you get are extended to single parents: that they can also earn £25k per year tax free, can also earn £100k before paying higher rate tax and £100k before starting to have child benefit withdrawn, etc. The fact you can't see how much single parents are disadvantaged by not having the options to utilise those choices that you as a couple can says it all really.

For parents who are not together the parent who does not have residency should be pursued by the state to provide for their children
surely that would help single parents

At the end of the day, unless one parent has actually died, children have two parents, whether those parents are still together or now. You can split up from a partner, but you don't divorce your children. Of course it should primarily be the parents who pay for the children they're created, not 'the government' - which in reality means taxpayers, often strapped for cash parents themselves who are struggling to pay for the children they chose to have themselves.

Ok so in my case, my children's father isn't dead. He left when they were babies, though. And was then arrested for such awful crimes that he can never, ever see them again.

We were married for years before having children. He had a successful career, good income, was very stable, so it seemed. No red flags. Even a close friend in this area of policing who knew him well had no idea, no bad feeling about him. Nobody did.

So short of a crystal ball please do tell me how I should have foreseen him walking out on two babies? And why I should be taxed more than other households with the same income as me even though I am just one person with only 24 hours per day to do all earning and childcare?

This is the problem: there is still this pervasive attitude that single mothers must deserve it. You must just be an idiot, have married someone who was appalling when someone smarter like them would have magically known somehow what would happen.

You don't. You can't. It could happen to anybody. And to actively penalise the decent parent who sticks around and does everything and deep down still hold these prejudiced views that "oh well, that would never happen to me", "it must just be poor judgement on their part", "I'm sure they brought it on themselves" etc, is so, so wrong. I hope (and I mean this genuinely) that you don't one day find out for yourself how wrong those prejudices are.

A couple co-habiting or a married couple would get a single allowance.

@ScruffyGiraffe so are you actually proposing a tax rise to two parent households then? Families like mine would have their tax allowance cut in half and pay more tax than they currently do? No thank you, we pay enough already. I wouldn’t support that at all.

This would also remove the anomalies in terms of one dual parent household losing child benefit for example at £60k and another being able to earn £120k before that happens, just because they split work/ childcare in different ways

I don't see this as an anomaly at all! It's comparing apples and oranges. If a family choose to have a SAHP and the other parent earns 60k, then if losing child benefit is such a deal breaker, then there is still one parent with capacity to work! And any household with a SAHP had no childcare costs, half the commuting/ transport costs ... it's a pretty privileged position. A household where the parents earn 60k each are likely to have huge childcare bills (there's quite a lot of hours and pressure to earning the big bucks) plus there're probably running two cars etc

Being taxed as an individual, on what I as a woman earn in my own right, and not being penalised just because I earn on a par with my husband, is not something I'd want to see changed