to think that people with savings don't realise they may not be eligible for ANY Universal Credit

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Universal Credit will be affected by savings over £6000 and if an individual or a couple have savings of £16000 between them they will not be entitled to any Universal Credit. I'm in a full time low paid job and have no pension, but do have savings slightly above £16000 from my inheritance. It wasn't a big safety net for the future especially with current interest rates but I thought it was better than nothing. Now Nothing would actually give me a much better return and I'm going to have to spend it on topping up my income, as I don't think the chance of getting a higher paid job is likely in the foreseeable future.

vivien most people are interested in "changes" most people have zero idea what is in store.

clouds i just can't agree that the family who have chosen to buy the new Zafira are in any way more deserving or 'in need of' UC then their neighbour who is saving for a house

But I don't think that either. If you can afford a new car, you shouldn't need benefits. I don't think people who can afford a new car are more deserving or are more in need of UC than someone who is saving for a house.

I don't think you should be able to afford to do either of those things while your life is being subsidised by the state. Benefits are not there to help you be able to save for a house.

Arguably though, people often need a car to be able to work. They don't need 16 grand sat in the bank to be able to work, and you condo get to work in a car that costs a lot less than £16,000.

And there you have it, tax credits are NOT BENEFITS. They are not intended to support a subsistence lifestyle. They were intended to help families with the costs of raising children and the costs of child care. A valuable 'tax break' for families has now been reframed as a 'benefit' by the Tory party.

These savings limits have applied to JSA and income support for years, savings under 6000 not taken into account sliding scale upto 16k

a few benefits like DLA take no account of either savings or income
child benefit now takes notice of income but not savings

equity in a house does not count but a second property would

for pensioners limit is 23k

spending savings on paying debts is reasonable and is accepted buying 16k new car is seen as depriving yourself of assets/ capital and they can assume you still have money and not pay benefit same with tying money up for your children if your children are specifically left money by grandparent in trust until they are 18 it can not be touched but if you were left the money and decided to transfer it to your children then that is asset deprivation

Of course tax credits are benefits!

There's a big difference between working tax credits (an unfortunate neccecity) and child tax credits (should be scrapped) but they are a benefit. You don't have to be in work to get child tax credits, therefore they are a benefit, and not solely intended to help with the cost of childcare.

People claimed child benefit & owned homes, had expensive holidays etc. Child tax credits was an effort to make more children's lives easier in the same way 7 working tax credit was to encourage people to work! People can work just as hard for a low paid job as a high paid one so to my mind great that they had tax credits to even things out a bit!

"They were intended to help families with the costs of raising children and the costs of child care. A valuable 'tax break' for families has now been reframed as a 'benefit' by the Tory party."

Yes, predictably enough.

When people at the time asked why it was necessary to take the money in tax and give it back in tax credits instead of changing allowances, there was no good answer.

I have always suspected that Brown saw that making large swathes of the population dependent on cash from the government as a good thing.

The fact that this choice made it easier for Tories to remove them and for right wingers to moan about "benefits culture" didn't figure.

But a tax break is just exemption from paying tax. So to simplify, if you paid £100 in tax and got that back that would be a tax break. But if you pay £100 in tax and get back £400 how is that a tax break. It's a benefit to all intents and purposes. I think it was misleading to call it tax credits.

They were only ever called tax credits as a ploy by labour to make them seem more palatable to people who would have rightly disagreed with their existence.

Doesn't the fact that you don't have to pay tax in order to claim child 'tax credits' tell you that they have absolutely nothing to do with tax?

property - no. 'Tax credit' is a total misnomer. Many people receive more in tax credit than they ever pay in tax, which makes it a benefit.

The whole system is totally fucked because people have raised their lifestyle expectations and taken career and child-rearing decisions based on state handouts rather than on their actual financial position.

Anyone who has £16k in the bank should not be claiming any state help.

Many families get more in tax credits than they ever pay in tax. How is that not a benefit?

The labour spin doctors were having a great day when they thought up tax credits. It was all propaganda.

I can't believe there are still people that genuinely believe tax credits aren't benefits. It would be laughable if it weren't so sad.

Of course people should be able to claim tax credits if they have 16k.

how are they ever going to get anything otherwise?

I don't think its fair to lump tax credits with other benefits anyway.

As I said earlier, we were all sold tax 'credits' as a way to raise our families.

Its beyond cruel to whip them away now.

clouds tax credits have helped people survive when earning shitty wages.

Yes, they are given when out of work, but they are also given to families that need them to top up low wages.

I think the issue is the high cost of living, especially housing. We can't just let people in low paying jobs starve or no longer be able to afford to pay their rents or run their cars. Never mind utility bills.

Unfortunately, if we took tax credits away from them, that's exactly what would happen. We all need people to do these low paid jobs, but the same people who rely on them, moan about tax credits. It's a crazy situation.

'We have never claimed a penny in over 40 yrs and the first time we try we are basically harassed until we decide to live off our savings while some "lard arse" or recent immigrant seems to have no issue.'

So you truly believe 'lard arses' and immigrants rock right up, get ESA and don't have harassment from ATOS or reams of paperwork? You do? I've got some oceanfront property in Arizona for sale, if that's the case.

PMSL! Immigrants who are non-EU nationals have to have a permanent residency visa to claim ESA at all, the cost of this visa is about £1000, they have to have lived here from 3-5+ years (3 for spouses of British or EU nationals and much longer for those who come on work visas), pass a Life in the UK exam (not free), and have no recourse to public funds before they get that residency visa.

They must pass fitness assessments and submit their earnings, income and savings/assets just like any other person.

Ditto 'lard arses'.

It was beyond silly to introduce them at the levels they were paying out. I agree that it is hard for people now to have these taken away. If people are getting hundreds of pounds a month extra from the state how can that be anything other than a top up, a benefit or call it what you will. It has nothing to do with tax as the normal meaning of the word.

it not difficult (under this system) to work out what you are able to claim.

The forms are simple.

From what I've seen on UC , it will be much harder.

'The welfare state is for people in need. Somebody with £16,000 in the bank isn't in need of help from somebody on low wages.'

I agree with that. That is fortune to most low-income wage earners. Well beyond a rainy-day bit of money for repairs or the odd emergency.

Feminine I'm interested in your assertion that you were forced to claim tax credits, how does that work?

Feminine, and that's where labour did such an excellent job on people like you.

Working tax credits top up low wages, I agree that they are needed, although I don't think they should be. They way working tax credits are designed means that people who receive them actually turn down work so their tax credits don't get reduced. I have a colleague that regularly works overtime to help out, but who cant afford to fill in a timesheet and claim for extra hours worked because she would end up with less money than she gets for working her regular hours! How is that right?

Child tax credits are given to people who are out of work, so they are a completely separate thing. They are 100% a benefit. I appreciate that they sometimes help towards childcare costs, which is a good thing, but there are much more efficient ways of helping people with childcare costs. Which thankfully, the government realises, so finally something is being done about it.

What is sad about this is that people in unstable employment who try to save, but who keep suffering redundancy, could run through all their savings several times, and never get a deposit for a house together, or not within working range of a 25 year mortgage. This would not be a problem except that tenants are treated like such utter shit; and that so many industries are so unstable that occasional or frequent redundancy and a period of job searching is a fact of life. Each time it is fucking square fucking one.

Ali We were forced as its impossible to survive without them.

We lived in the US for about 7 yrs, my DH did a job that here would be deemed hardly deserving of MW -and yet we needed no Governmental help. living quite nicely actually.

We also got back a nice little tax refund at the end of the year , a portion of that was purely for having kids!

Lots of countries give back to their people, the UK is not the only place that has back-up.

If they never raise MW , then people working for it will forever need help.