lets have a tax credit rant thread

[maighdlin]

as it is the joyful new tax credit year i thought i would start a thread for people to rant on.

our tax credits have gone down to £33pw when according to HMRC calculator it should be £68pw. i received no letter from them informing me of this cut. i phoned them and they are using an estimate of our income based on the assumption that i would have been working full time since having DD, not true was made redundant. They said i can't get it fixed until i receive my renewal pack and i may not receive it until 30 june. GREAT!! DH earns just over 15k we pay 660pm for mortgage and rates. i'm a full time student but most of my money goes on child care. can't get a job as most jobs that i could do are min wage and they would have to pay me more than a 16 year old so 16 year old probably gets job. I feel like banging my head against the wall. even more money worries!!

feel free to vent about tax credits below. overpayments, underpayments, their general unhelpfulness...

postive that is simply not possible for everyone to do not matter how hard they try. there are jobs that will always need to be done and jobs that people are great at and serve society but pay shite. if everyone earnt 35k then everything will go up in price to match it, and people earning 35k would be no better off than earning 10k now IYSWIM and the whole cycle would begin again. you can't blame people for being unable to afford things without help for lack of trying. so what if a magic fairy gave all those earning less than 20k training etc a new job earning 35k who is supposed to do the

Positive there are lots of ways to better oneself but they often take time and increase dependency in the short time.

However, our sociarty survives on tehe being a core of people vastly underpaid: it's all part of capitalism. Lots of the people work in the jobs that enable other people to work- say childcare, elderly care- and the people using them cannot afford to pay them more but the wages they get simply don't cover the basics so what then?

Whcih is why society either needs to accept supplementary-wages such as TC or UC or sort out thwe shole cost of living crisis. Either is fine, but one or t'other.

It's hard to take cuts but I can assure poeople that everyone is feeling them; we've lost the only practical Sn help we get (summer play club) and theya re cutting teh Sn TC proportion by 2/3 so it's not just one group. Some of it quite ahrd to see though and it's easy for anyone to feel targeted I know.

The problem with paying people higher wages/tax credits is that its just makes the UK less competitive vs other countries who pay far less than us already. We end up with lower investment and less jobs.

The real solution is to reduce the cost of living, which to a great extent comes down to reducing the cost of housing (rents or house prices). The problem is that people in this country actually believe house prices rises are a good thing! People are so easliy indoctrinated by the media and don't realize that, unless you're a baby boomer downsizing or emigrating, higher house prices are actually a bad thing.

We will have to have wage inflation shortly due to the increases in everything else, petrol especially otherwise people won't be able to afford to get to work.

I haven't heard anything, I'm new to all this what happens now it's April? do I have to apply again or something, does it carry on as normal?

They phoned up when I applied because I am on a zero hour contract and there system doesn't take such things into account (well it should the government allows zero hour contracts, idiots) they put me down as unemployed as I had no income other then SMP but I've been called into work about 3 days since the start of this year so should have about 90 quid on the end of year tax thing from work.