To ask about child tax credit cuts.

[yellowbird11]

Is it inevitable and if so will it affect everyone? what a massive worry to all of you who are going to be affected.My DD works 16 hours a week and has 1 child. She'd love to do more hours as her child is at school but isn't able to. Can anyone give me any idea how much she'll lose, and when? I'm so worried for her because I know without these tax credits they'll be barely able to eat and keep warm. How can these Tory bs sleep at night?

Joy - surely families where someone is a carer, the tax credit threshold will be higher if the child is claiming DLA,unless the disability element going? I think with lone parents, their situations can vary so much for example , some will be worse hit than others.

Baby as far as I am aware the disability element is staying but will be subject to the increase in the withdrawal rate. I have not seen any proposals for uplift in the threshold for carers. Carers allowance is also treated as income and subject to the proposed 48% withdrawal rate. (eg One parent working NMW job with second parent caring for disabled child).

There was a brief impact assessment from GO on 15 October which clarifies that the DISABLED will be the HARDEST hit by the changes.

I've just done the calculation from the independent - £1500 worse off according to that. I don't get housing benefit - I have a mortgage. The only tax credits I ever received was for childcare - without it I couldn't work & would have had to give up work/lose my home 7 yrs ago. They've cut them back more & more over the past 5 years & now they'll go altogether now.

I always knew I'd end up screwed the longer the tories were in power. They are fucking clueless about what that sort of financial hit means to those already stretched to the limit. My wages haven't risen since fucking 2008 while all my bills - food/petrol/gas/electric/childcare - have & I can't just shrug that sort of impact on my budget away. I've been stretched to my limits for years & scraped by somehow.

Fucking Tory bastards. As always. £1500 is fuck all to them.

Carers allowence is indeed included as income (despite all other depts calling it unearned) so it contributes towards the lower threshold someone who works say 16 hours PW as well as being a carer who is also in reciept of HB currently loses half of it to considered income as the HB carers premium is £30 PW tax credits will effectively remove almost half of it as well with the taper

SummerNights1986 - there is an online calculator from Union which you can play around with and see how much families will lose depending on income and how many children etc

Carrie that's kind of my point though - A family of 4 will lose £1800. That doesn't mean anything to me - £1800 out of what? A TC award of £2k? £5k? £12k?

I expect and know that people will be losing income. That much is obvious. It still says nothing of what income they're left with.

'There was a brief impact assessment from GO on 15 October which clarifies that the DISABLED will be the HARDEST hit by the changes.'

As usual, because, of course, they are all faking it. Let's not forget how much the Tory government has removed in the way of employers making workplaces more suitable for disabled employees.

lavent im so sorry you went through that. The law really needs to get to grips with reproductive coercion.

I bet hes not paying Child Support either.

Posters who have mentioned the unemployed arent affected. Childless ppl have been under more punitive measures for a long time. A poster on another thread mentioned her son was going to be made to do 12 hour days in a factory full time for his UC.

And lavents experience is another case of a woman being punished with poverty for leaving an abusive man

None of these things should be happening. None of it. Ive mentioned reproductive coercion on threads before in reply to Tories who say "well you chose to have kids" to other posters and i usually get told its irrelevant because its rare.

Sadly i dont believe its as rare as we would like to think.

I get Carers Allowance but I don't report it on my tax credits form. I just tick the box for income support and it says not to fill in the rest of the income details as I get max CTCs due to being on income support.

I can definitely believe that carers will be better off going back on benefits rather than working. I have friends who also have disabled children and a lot of them are considering this. It would just cost a lot more to pay for extra travel, lunch and other work costs, and if you claim Carers Allowance and income support then you don't have to do jobseeking or go through any assessments like with JSA or ESA.

SummerNights1986 - there are calculators out there so you can work out the TC award as well. Then you'll have both the figure of the TC award, and the amount that the family will lose.

Rather than trying to get people who are in dire financial situations and terrified of what next year will bring, to give out there 'specifics' so that you can understand why people are so upset.

Or do you just want the info so you can challenge their situation and tell them what they can do to sort themselves out??

Re Joy......How are they going to survive? I really do believe you are going to find more women taking the decision to enter the sex industry.

Helena correct no child support. He conveniently lives in a country where this cannot be enforced

OK so I've just played about on Entitled to. Kept my situation the same, except put me and dh on NMW (currently £6.70 an hour) meaning as a low income family we're entitled to TC's. Gives us an annual income of £24400 gross or £22750 net (both working a 35 hour week). 2 dc. Mortgage.

So 2015-2016 Income:
Net income: £22750
Tax credit award (2015-2015): £5,612.55
Child benefit: £1,788.80
TOTAL: 30151.35
OR £2512 a month

The 'worse off calculator' says we'd be £2400 a year worse off from April. So, our net income moves from £2512 to £2312 a month.

'I'm losing £2400 a year' sounds fucking horrific when talking about the 'working poor' and imagining people scraping around to feed their kids.

'My household income is £2312 a month'...not so much.

Which is why I said the situation and total income is completely relevant when talking about these cuts. I'm not saying £2300 a month is raking it in or living the high life - at all. But it IS enough if you cut your cloth accordingly. And for anyone saying all the Tory Cunts don't know what it's like to be poor - I do. And I've done it on less.

I'd still be interested to hear some actual examples. 'I'm losing £1k a year' is pretty meaningless when you don't know what someone's household income and set up is to start with

so....poor people (because, which ever side of this debate you might be standing on, it is widely acknowledged that it is the poorest people in society who are going to be the biggest losers when this happens) should post their personal financial details here for you to decide whether or not the financial loss they will experience is justified? are you actually serious?

If someone cut your budget by £200 a month, what would happen?

Cross post Cannot - I've done my own example as people clearly aren't willing to.

No, no one has to post their financial details. But if I came on here ranting and raving that my cunting cunts of an employer had just slashed my wage by £5k - then clearly my pov and my rage is more justified if my annual salary was £18k to start with. If it was £50k - not so much.

SummerNights honestly, why don't you just go and put some numbers through one of the calculators? It's very easy to do.

What the calculators can't do is to tell you how many people will be significantly affected. The problem is that neither can the government, because they have elected not to do proper impact studies of the changes.

But we are not talking about people on salaries or household incomes of £50k plus. We are talking about the 'working poor'. People frequently on minimum wage, people with disabilities or children with disabilities, or lone parents. People who's ability to make up the difference when Tax Credits are cut are limited. Why do you think you have some kind of right to know what I earn to decide whether or not the cuts are justified? I don't understand why you think you have that kind of right? That it's OK to judge me based on what I earn and how much Tax Credit I receive? I just don't get it...I work fucking hard and do everything I can to support my family. I won't be able to make up this difference - we will struggle as a result. Why is that not enough?

because cannot people want to understand why. its not enough for people on here to be told something, they want to understand why that is. maybe its how they were educated... i dont know but just stating something isn't enough, you need the logic behind it.

Why do you think you have some kind of right to know what I earn to decide whether or not the cuts are justified? I don't understand why you think you have that kind of right?

I don't. Obviously.

But based on the evidence I have seen (and the one specific example below which is the only one of its kind I've seen) I do have the right to my own opinion on the matter.

And so far, I still agree with the TC cuts. I KNOW that people will lose income. I get it. Thousands, in some cases. I GET THAT. I've seen nothing concrete to convince me that it's unjust or pushing people into poverty or anything else. Only that, in many cases, people were having too much in TC's given to them in the first place.

No...what you want is to make a judgement about 'lifestyle' and to be able to judge whether it's OK for a family to own a car (or 2), have mobile phone contracts and sometimes go out to eat. You are asking for detail to decide whether or not the cuts are reasonable. If you want the detail, you are suggesting that people (poor people) don't have a right to be believed that the cuts are going to badly affect them and their households. You are suggesting that we are unable to manage our own budgets and that's very patronising unreasonable.

I asked a few posts ago - what would happen to your household if you were to suddenly lose £200 a month?

Dreaming of - I agree.

Also consider this.
If I posted a thread on here about how my employer was cutting my salary by £3k, and we were fucked and I'd not be able to feed my kids and so on.

How many pages do you think would go by before someone asked for details of my salary, so that they could establish just how fucked I was and whether I was bu or not?

It's just common sense. And if I said 'well that's none of your bloody business' I would fully expect the overwhelming response to be 'well in that case YABU as we don't have the full details'.

Yep cannotlogin.

Its classism in action. One of the still socially acceptable prejudices.

You are asking for detail to decide whether or not the cuts are reasonable

Of course I am. Because how much income someone affected is left with is completely relevant to whether the cuts were reasonable or not.

what would happen to your household if you were to suddenly lose £200 a month?

If you insist on an answer - nothing.

Its classism in action. One of the still socially acceptable prejudices.

If you are talking about posters on here however, it assumes you know what 'class' posters are from.

Its classism in action. One of the still socially acceptable prejudices.

Going on threads on here over the past few weeks ageism is certainly live and kicking

ShutthatDoor I actually think working class Tories are worse. They are the kind who were happy to take the advantages when it suited them but want to pull up the drawbridge/ladder for everyone else. Classism is not only perpetrated by the upper/middle classes.

Funinthesun yes i noticed that too.