To think that people who complain about not getting child benefit because they earn above the threshold can fuck right off?

[CosetteFauchlavent]

Firstly I should say that I am applying this to people who are coupled up - it's very different for single parents.

I have an acquaintance, friend of a friend, who I'm not particularly keen on but my friend insists on inviting to group outings etc. She describes herself as "the girl who has everything" and has said several times that she's going back to work after maternity leave even though her DH earns enough for her to be a SAHM.

Anyway, the other day she came out with "It's so unfair that people on benefits get child benefit for doing nothing, we earn too much to qualify WAAAH." The "WAAH" is not my addition, she actually said it.

AIBU to think SBU?

its outrageous one couple earning 80k can get it where as another couple where one is a sahp
would not get it with a much lower income

how there was no riots about it, I don't know

O and I choose not to work as I have no incentive to work with 3 young dc. Dh earns a good salary but works bloody hard with long hours and has a long commute for it. We lost 188 permonth child benefit. The cost of childcare would be more than I could earn but I am not allowed to moan as I have chosen to sahm. Yet if we separated I would be taking home 19k in benefits paid for no doubt by hrt payers mainly.

Who to vote for in May is going to be incredibly difficult. All parties screw over single earner families on 50-60k. They're the only ones they can extort money from.

Whoever thought out the CB policy was an utter bastard.

A family with a combined salary of £99,999 gets CB, but a family with 1 salary of £50k doesn't. How is that remotely reasonable?

< resumes sticking pins into wax doll of George Osbourne & co >

You must be very naive if you think all high earner are hard working!

That's so true. My brother in law earns £60K per annum and he couldn't find his arse with both hands.

I wouldn't want one! He's been pretty much given a business that his dad built from nothing. There's a manager who appears to do all of the actual work and it's not terribly clear to anyone what BIL does, but perhaps he does have hidden talents.

I neither begrudge him his salary nor envy him- just pointing out that you don't have to be either clever or hard working to earn good money.

I'm not disputing £60k is a good salary but it's NOT a high salary
At £60k there are (rightly) no additional benefits but it's very different to being in same band as someone on £120k
Or a couple on £49k x2 like many have said
I am a cliche middle
Huge student loans
Compulsory pensions
Large mortgage on small house
Huge childcare bill more than mortgage
I can't give up work or we'd be repossessed but I don't have dispose able for working either

I'm not poor and I'm not pleading poverty but cb did make a difference and I'd love for families to be recognised as a unit and household incomes to be recognised

The exception rather than the rule though findo. My dh does 13 hour dsys including commute for his salary.

Universal benefits are much cheaper to administer, everyone should get it. Take it back from the well off in other ways.

Bananabix I think you will find that the very hardest working in the UK are the lowest paid.

Bananabix you are right with that. I know someone who came from "nothing", parents both in manual unskilled jobs (scrubbing toilets) and he now earns over the CB threshold through working his ass off (and is clever). This is social mobility that everyone wants to promote but ironically when it happens, people are filled with jealousy and hatred and want to drag him back down again. I know another person, in fact this guy is the only person I know who is filthy filthy rich and almost everyone around is jealous and thinks oh he can afford [whatever] even though it's generally not his responsibility. If I was him, I'd not want to speak to anyone.

We seem also to have this terrible attitude that everyone in unskilled jobs/little money is the salt of the earth and all the rich/high earners are lazy fat cats. When probably both categories of people contain hard workers and lazy workers.

"the very hardest working in the UK are the lowest paid."

Not always. Also depends on what you class as 'hard work'.

I loose the child benefit not because of my earnings but because my DH earns more than the threshold. However he is not my DC's father. He does not pay for my DC and has no parental responsibility for them.

The Child Benefit office do not care about this, as we are a couple and he is the higher earner I loose the CB. If they took the kids father's salary I would not loose it. They got very defensive when I told them how ridiculous I thought it was.

The whole concept of higher tax allowances for people with children is so incredibly insulting for people without children. What about low earning single, childless people who don't even qualify for tax credits - but still have to pay out food, rent, travel etc?

When the cut in CB happened our family was one of the worst hit, 4 DC just over the 60K threshold. We lost £242 a month, in real terms this is like a 5K drop in salary.

Yes it has affected us I don't think anyone wouldn't notice a 5K drop in salary but we obviously aren't starving.

The thing about the dual earners earning 99K between them and still get to keep it really gets to me. If you earn 60K you already pay 7K a year more in tax than a couple earning 30K between them. If your earning over 42K your taxed at 40 % already you are already contributing, CB was in recognition of the extra costs of bringing up a family.

It's the start of a slippery slope, next it'll be three children only, then 40K, 30K and finally it'll be slipped into universal credit and forgot about completely

The new system is shit. I am highly qualified but simply can't get a job now. My DH leaves the house at 5.30am twice a week and 6.50am 3 times a week. The earliest he gets home from his commute is 8.20pm. He gets £57kpa and after pensions and childcare deductions he still has to pay back some child benefit. Any pay rise he gets in the future is going to negated by the loss of child benefit. He has to pay nearly £800 a month for this commute. By the time we have paid our bills there is nothing left. We also won't qualify for the marriage allowance. We get no help at all from the system and I have to pay for any prescriptions and dental work. We have not had a honeymoon. Our children have never been on holiday at all. We took ds1 on a day trip to a beach once. Ds2 has never seen the sea. The only jobs in my industry are full time. Never ever part time. I would be solely responsible for drop offs, pick ups, and worked out that my income would cover the childcare and leave us with circa £100 -£200 month spare. For dumping the children with a myriad of childminders, preschool, and from September we need to add to the list a school and after school clubs between 8am and 6pm if not longer each day, spending every morning and night racing from one place to another, and them going to bed at 7pm each night. It is just not worth the stress, for such little in return, these years are too precious. They spend 5 days a week not seeing one parent as it is. The child benefit was money that I used for buying clothes and toys and shoes etc for them. For me to be saying it's not worth working and the system is against us, it shows what a sorry state this country has become. I am a highly qualified professional, but even with my earning potential, work does not pay when you deduct child care. Even if I had £200 spare a month from work (which I think is over estimating it) the hourly rate I would be effectively earning to improve the family finances would be 92p an hour for the 50 hours I'd be away from my children.

Loopyabout there are many people in your situation and it is very, very unfair by anybody's judgement. The crazy thing is either George Osborne or Danny Alexander (cant recall who) said at the time Child Benefit was to be ameliorated, that to bring in a system that allowed for single higher earners on £60k+ to keep some but claw back for the 2 x £49k earners would be "too complicated to make workable". This, from a Government of a G7 nation, trying to run an economy with GDP of £2,678,000,000,000. Well, if they cannot sort the Child Benefit fiasco out, then they are incapable of......hmmm........preparing their own expenses claims! Oh...!

Actually, no, fuck it. Just scrap it altogether. Why get paid for having a baby.

We're in the transition zone based on Dh's salary. When his department get a pay bonus, we don't keep most of the benefit of it because it gets paid back as my CB. The loss of tax breaks e.g. marriage allowances that my parents claimed means that there is no recognition of when he has supported me to be a SAHP. Statistically it is of long term advantage for families like us to raise moderately sized families.

Currently I'm working PT which means that despite being in a professional occupation, I earn just under the threshold to repay my student loan. Therefore any modest increases income are of minimal benefit to us as the Inland Revenue or Student Loans company are the main beneficiaries of our efforts.

I think that there is a case for universal benefits in keeping all classes politically engaged. I utterly dislike the unfair method used to cut people out of CB. I think a better hatchet method would have been to only allow standard rate payers to claim which would have reduced the level of gaping disparity of the current method.

Exactly sweet kitty . We lost 188 per month. Just waiting for someone to say that if you need chb on this money you aren't budgeting carefully enough or you could downsize or move to a cheaper area. Ok so we can happily live without it but it is the unfairness of it. Ironically we also haven't gained from fsm for ks as our dc are too young or too old.

Aibu to think cb should be stopped altogether op?

Yabvvvvu