to think its an awful thing that 80% of working age benefits go to people in work

[medona]

Constantly people, like O'Brien on LBC, tot this out as if its a good thing.

In what world is it ever good that workers are not paid enough to live on so tax payers have to top up their income?

Pyjamaramadrama - What?

They do say no under occupying. Hence your example family couldn't get a room each.
They also let people stay in properties with secure tenancys as they should. Secure lets is good for communities and gives people stability. However in order that other families can take advantage of the larger houses they have to make smaller properties attractive. Being entitled to possibily getting all your rent paid is just that.

My point is that the bedroom tax only hurts the most vulnerable, those who can't afford to pay all of their rent. Those who can afford it will continue to under occupy anyway.

It isn't really helping anybody.

It's depressing. A living wage would only help so much. If you are a low earner and you don't own your own home it's really hard.

A relative of mine is almost 60 she was a single mum of 2, has always worked but never earned enough to buy her own house. The kids are now grown-up, she earns £18k per year and has to pay £700 per month rent for her flat, not entitled to any top-up benefits, she gets by but there is little left by the time bills have been paid. She has battled countless illnesses and is one of the most hardworking selfless people I know. This is why all the talk about inheritance tax annoys me, there is this perception that the rich have worked really hard and therefore are entitled to pass on every last cent of their wealth. It's not just the rich who have worked hard. I know people who are working hard and trying to put enough by so that children are not burdened by their funeral costs. It's a world away from worrying about a little bit of inheritance tax that might be due on your £1 million + Chelsea town houses.

Nope. Sorry allocations are still done on need ( not want) and always have been.
You seem to think that housing benefit has always paid all the rent. That is pretty much only for people who aren't in work. Once you work housing benefit starts coming down. The rent doesn't increase though, you simply get marginally less benefit.

Well.

I'm a cleaner. I clean a few peoples' houses for 2/3 hours at a time for £10 an hour, and for one full day a week I clean for a local business for £8.50 an hour.

The local business I clean for is being sold and my current boss told me that the new owners were genuinely amazed that she pays the cleaners so much! They wanted to "renegotiate" us down to £6.50 an hour - she told them in no uncertain terms that it would be an outrageous thing to do and that they needed to pay as well as they could afford to.

So yeah. The NMW is indeed nothing more than a bottom limit for how little you can get away with paying. It never occurred to the new owners, nice and educated though they are, that paying slightly over the odds was reasonable. Oh no. It was surprising to them that anyone would pay a mere cleaner so bloody much as £8.50 an hour [anger]

And when I think of supermarkets profits being so massive and their CEOs salary/bonuses so high, yet half their workers are in reciept of benefits to make ends meet, I wonder... who the fuck is REALLY rinsing the benefits system here??

I know that I claimed a small amount of housing benefit until 12 months or so ago. I paid most of my rent and claimed a small amount of housing benefit.

It is a fact that properties are allocated differently now. I'm not saying that they didn't allocate on need before, but a mum with an 8 and 9 year old boy and girl would have been allocated a 3 bed. A non resident parent might have been allocated a 2 bed.

Now they will not, this is a fact I don't work for housing but I still need to know all the rules for my work without outing myself.

Of course it helps people;no one moved out of larger properties into smaller ones unless they wanted to relocate.
Now they have an incentive - all the rent gets paid ( if entitled). So bigger families have properties being freed up for them.
If you can't afford to pay for the extra rooms out of your other benefits then you can downsize. You can swap/ exchange and in some cases the HA or council help you move ( make payments etc).

I work and receive PIP - it is an allowance to compensate for the extra costs of having a very painful chronic illness .
There are many hidden costs caused by disability.
I am actually proud that I drag myself out to work - it is my mindset that allows me to do that - it doesn't mean that I because I manage to work I am well enough to do so - because it impacts upon my health big time.

Or it might be more of an incentive to have another child.

It takes 2 people on decent salaries to be comfortable raising a family of 2-3 kids. Most of the in-work benefits and tax credits apart from disability benefits go to people who for whatever reason (lone parent, part time work, start-up self employment, only one earner in family, caring responsibilities, big family) aren't in that bracket, but are still working. Because they still have the same living expenses as the two earner family and the state tops them up so they can get by and participate in society, which keeps other people in jobs too.

I agree with Pyjamaramadrama
First time round as a single parent in the early 90s I had to give up a promising career as there was no help available if i worked, and the childcare equalled my salary so I had to claim benefits. I took a long time getting back to full time work, and have probably never achieved the salary I would have had now if help had been available for a few years.

Second time round in mid -noughties tax credits enabled me to start self employment and then part time employment while baby was small, and then go back to fulltime later, reducing the amount I claimed overall, iyswim.

But I don't think it's actually a bad for thing for families if parents can choose and be supported to work part time on a tight budget for a while, instead of the choice being between unemployment and penury and full time working all hours God sends, never seeing your kid and spending most of your wages on childcare. I call it a worthwhile investment.

"A higher tax allowance and scrapping tax credits would be far better."

How much would raising the tax allowance to £13,000 from the current £10,600, help someone on the NMW? A grand total of £415 per year. Less than £8 per week.

What about a tax free allowance of £15,000? Still £415 per year.

DH earns approximately the NMW full time rate. Almost half our income is from tax credits. If you took them away and increased the tax free allowance, you'd be cutting our household income in half.