Bloody W**NKing Tax credits! Or Government should I say

[Hai1988]

Just had my new tax credits award and have just found out that my DH's Working tax credits are being stopped as he has already had his lot for this year, £800!!!

My DH does not have a very well payed job at all and after rent and bills we have f**K all left and the weekly income of £140 really helped that is now just over £50.

So angry We need that extra £80 a week, I know it may not sound much to some but it did make a big difference to out life's.

Who ever voted Tory I hope your happy with yourselves that now so many family's are probably gonna struggle now.

Sorry not really an aibu but really needed to vent and wondered if anyone else is suffering with tax credits this year because of the dam government.

If Tesco were enforced to pay all current workers legally a minimum of £10p/h it falls within reason they might claw back the loss through increasing the cost of its supply. Perhaps only marginally but if every employer of NMW marginally increased the costs this would increase the cost of living overall for every inhabitant of the UK making it a case of "robbing Peter to pay Paul" in simple terms.

I never said anything about 'pesky illegals', but you do get workers (quite legally) who come here short term to work, who take their wages back to their home countries (so not benefitting the economy here), and who are not hampered by having to pay the cost of a mortgage/council tax etc in this country. I don't blame them for doing it - I would in their position too, but it does mean that the jobs they are doing are not available to people who have to live here full time and if they were available they wouldn't pay enough to actually live on when you take into account cost of living here.

Prettymeerkat- I got it from the post you wrote about 'leaving children with strangers ' - which is a cheap underhand shot at all of us who use paid childcare. Backpedal as much as you like- its there in black and white

To all those who are going on abut how tax credits are benefits I have a question.

Do you think that people who are entitled to them (I get family element for eg) should not claim them?

Does that then apply to Child Benefit as well?

Coco
Really good point yes I believe it would.

Another point that many people just don't get is that, contrary to daily mail stories, most high earners in this country DO pay tax and shit loads of it. Those people who want the mega earners wages cut are effectively saying they want our tax pot cut quite dramatically. Quite often the wages are paid by foreign banks to British and foreign workers in Britain who pay taxes in Britain. What good would it do to try to get their wages cut. It's not like the foreign bank would donate some of the pay cut to a low paid worker in another company.

City workers pay the same amount of tax that the government gets from the whole of scotland!!

janey68 I'm not back peddling at all actually. Someone mentioned it (think it might have been the OP) and I said that I could see why she would feel that way. That will all be there in black and white as well

prettymeerkat
Obviously you can claim for them because they are available to you.

The point is that if they have been cut and you are struggling financially and you don't work with kids of school age then go get yourself a job.
If you are adamant you want to do the school run there is nothing to stop you doing a cleaning job to help with finances is there. And I defy anyone to say there aren't cleaning jobs out there for people who want to graft a bit?

OP would you do a cleaning job?

niceguy2 I don't claim benefits and get only the family element of tax credits. Erm....tax credits is a benefit.

So what about you? Do YOU think I should be claiming them?

The combination of income & tax credits you get means you have a choice not to work. That is a choice you made because the system has allowed it to happen (rightly or wrongly) at the expense of the taxpayer. I actually don't have a problem with your choice since you are taking money you are entitled to.

PLEASE read properly. I DO have a job!

The combination of income & tax credits you get means you have a choice not to work. That is a choice you made because the system has allowed it to happen (rightly or wrongly) at the expense of the taxpayer.

Ah. That's sort of what I was getting at. It would've been nice to have the choice like others.

karmabeliever - "the govt defines what a fair living wage is and because not all companies pay it, they top up with tax credits. Take away the tax credits and the wage is not sufficient to support a SAHP and children. That to me is wrong. I dispute that companies can't afford it. Some would struggle I'm sure (and could maybe have their wages topped up as the system exists at the moment) but a lot of companies make vast profits, so ought to be covering their own wages bill."

What you're saying is, companies that can afford to pay more should do so?

Ok, let's assume that Tesco can be forced to pay shelf stackers £10/h because they can afford it. What happens to the people who were doing that job at NMW? Your scheme would backfire and they'd end up being replaced by more highly skilled/qualified people. In fact Tesco would have department managers from other retailers beating their door down for those shelf stacking jobs.

That leads to the next point: if you pay shelf stackers £10/h, how much do you pay the person who supervises them? Let's suppose they're on 20% more than the shelf stacker, so you either now have to pay them £12/h or why would they want the responsibility? It goes on and on along the chain until everyone is being paid a vastly inflated wage. You can't suddenly stop and say anyone on more that £14/h isn't getting an increase as it would mean that no one would want a more senior job.

Rampant wage inflation does no one any favours.

In general, the open market is fair; you will earn according to what you're worth and what you're willing to do for it.

microfight

Another point that many people just don't get is that, contrary to daily mail stories, most high earners in this country DO pay tax and shit loads of it. Those people who want the mega earners wages cut are effectively saying they want our tax pot cut quite dramatically.

The fact that most high earners pay loads of tax and in fact the majority of income tax, should tell you something is seriously wrong with income distribution in the UK. Imagine a situation where one person in the country earns all of the money and thus pays all of the income tax. The rest of the population work unpaid for their master (because their employer the rich man claims he can't afford to pay them) and have to rely on state handouts from the tax paid by the one rich man. What you are saying is that the rich man should not be asked or forced to take less for his labour because otherwise not enough tax would be paid to support the scroungers. The real solution to this is to ensure that the workers are paid a wage high enough that they pay taxes and in this extreme example would mean that yes, the rich man must accept less.

In the real world fairer and more equitable societies have a much more even distribution of both income and taxes paid. This is what we should be aiming for, not a race to the bottom in wages and living conditions.

Good points ShellyBoobs

YANBU. If people have money coming in, whether benefits or not, it is wrong to just take it away. If it has to go, it should be tapered away.

Tax credits help as many mums to work as stay at home. For those who say don't have kids that you cannot afford, does that apply to those who claim help with childcare and work? Should they not have kids if they cannot afford their own childcare?

Bizarre that people moan about those getting abit of tax credits yet they don't seem to mind the fact that footballers etc. are on stupid money. Is it fair that they get millions for kicking a ball?

If someone is worth millions to a company they should be paid a fair ratio of that, or the only real person benefitting is the employer anyway through the profits.

I think assessing worth is artificial. A rubbish collector earns less than a doctor, but you need them both. Okay, the doctor has more skills than the rubbish collector, hence the disparity but society needs both. Therefore the person collecting rubbish should be paid enough to live on without needing govt top ups.

With the wage thing, I'm not saying that Tesco should give an employee X amount and the corner shop would only give half that. What the employee takes home should be the same whichever one they work for. Therefore I think MW has to rise, not to artificially high levels but to enough to actually live on. Perhaps companies of a certain size would have to meet the whole cost of staff wages, whereas smaller companies could get a top up from the govt to meet wage bills (rather than giving a tax credit directly to the employee, it would go via the employer). That way there would be no stampede to work at tesco rather than the corner shop.

I don't know if any of this would work, I'm just thinking that unless wages match cost of living or there is little alternative but to have state top ups.

Yes it is fair footballers get paid millions because that reflects the revenue the bring to their club- the employer.

Of course its not as worthy morally or as socially as many jobs, but if you were uniquely responsible for making a company £10 million per year would you happily accept NMW knowing you had made another man very rich?

shellyboobs

I imagine karmabeliever isn't just talking about Tesco. All employers would have to pay a higher minimum wage. Incidently though, last year Tesco made such enormous profits that they could have paid a £10,000 bonus to each and every one of it's UK staff. It didn't though.

Regarding wage differentials - why would these need to remain the same? Have top bosses wages gone down at the same time as many of their workers. Seems to me like director's pay only goes higher and higher. Perhaps in your example Tesco could manage with less supervisors. By paying a higher wage and empowering their workers they may find that much of the supervision really isn't necessary. Did you see that programme a while back where a holiday caravan park virtually doubled the pay of the cleaners at the same time as doing away with 3/4 of the supervisors. Each cleaner was given greater responsibility for their job, including managing their own equipment and supplies, how long they spend cleaning each caravan etc. The results were incredible. Productivity went up, the standard of cleaning improved enormously, staff were motivated (and thus staff turnover decreased) and everybody won. It turns out that virtually all the supervision was unnecessary and in fact couterproductive.

Bizarre that people moan about those getting abit of tax credits yet they don't seem to mind the fact that footballers etc. are on stupid money. Is it fair that they get millions for kicking a ball?

is that paid for by the taxpayer?
do they not pay tax back into the system at a very high rate?

How many of you benefits bashers are taking advantage of benefits yourselves by employing childminders on low wages who then have to claim tax credits themselves. Looks to me that you are receiving benefits but indirectly.

oohjarWhatsit Thu 07-Jul-11 14:58:10

is that paid for by the taxpayer?
do they not pay tax back into the system at a very high rate?

Err. No. Most (many) of these footballers use offshore tax dodges to avoid paying income tax on their enormous earnings. I guess when you're paid millions of pounds a year you really notice paying 50% tax. It must be so difficult to get by on the other 50%.

DoesBuggerAll

Yes,I said the same thing...

As I said last night,all MW workers should be paid a living wage (about 15 per hour )and do away with ALL benefit including CB.

So if you want more children,your wages are there in black and white...

Housing that is affordable is also relavent,that also needs a massive turnaround.