To be gutted that I won't be getting tax credits for 3rd child?

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I'm just wondering what people's opinion is really.

We are trying for a 3rd child and I won't be getting any tax credits for this child as the government has changed the rules so that from next year tax credits are only paid for up to a maximum of 2 children.

I currently receive around £1k of TC for the kids and I would have received £4k for the 3rd if the government hadn't made the changes.

That would have meant an extra £250 a month. It's a lot of money for us. My DH works and I'm a SAHM. We have a £100k mortgage on a small house in a deprived area of town. We get by. We don't have much money left each month and I need to save literally for everything. I'm really really gutted. I really wanted 3 kids and this has meant that I'll be financially alot worse off now.

Of course I don't expect the government to "pay" for my children but it would have really helped, that's all. It would have eased the pressure off.

Just for the record we have never received any other benefits apart from JSA when DH was made redundant last year which was a godsend as we would have been homeless otherwise.

Do you think AiBU to feel/ think like this?

But you must agree that people will not all simply stop having babies if we cut benefits surely?

Presumably there are statistics available as to differences (or not) in family size by income and benefit-claim?

the system props up employers who won't pay a living wage.
Taxpayers money is being used to allow big companies to wriggle out of paying people enough to live on. That's disgraceful.

Hear hear.

Of course, there'd always need to be something for parents and others that can't work and need a top up on their other income (carers, disabled, long term sick, pensioners, unemployed).

Of course, there'd always need to be something for parents and others that can't work and need a top up on their other income (carers, disabled, long term sick, pensioners, unemployed).

Of course. Benefits for the disabled/carers imho should be much higher. Carers save the state huge amounts of money - they are woefully under resources.
I think tax credits will be the next thing to go in the name of austerity

If the only people who could strictly speaking afford to have kids were the only ones to have them there wont be the next generation of minimum wage job fodder..cant see the Jocastas and Jeremys being happy to work in Asda with no prospect of anything else ...or is that just a job for those from across the channel...you know ...those hardworking forrriners...
Tax credits was original presented as returning tax paid...ie cack handed way of reducing tax burden.. .although it replaced schemes like Family Income Supplement

Sick of hearing this stuff. As person whoworks hard with one one grown up child I am to be frank not prepared to work my A* Off to pay your tax credits for another kid. After 2 all benefits should stopped. Tell me why people working should pay for your no 3?

I am generally the most liberal person but this royally pisses me off

Just had ds2 and as such we have two ds in full time nursery

We get nothing (obviously child benefit) whatsoever.....and that's fine we are not entitled to anything we both work and pay our way but this month to keep a roof over our head we both have to work full time and as such this month we are paying 2k for one months nursery so that's fine ....dh and I will minimise what we eat and be extremely careful

And your batching because the government won't give you a handout to have ANOTHER child ....let's be clear not the first...I'd be incredibly supportive especially if there were infertility issues...but no you want a third and you still don't want to go out to work???

Guess what ...nor do I.... I don't want to sit on the m25 three hours a day....but I have to

So your post disgusts me....suck it up and start giving something to the community rather than taking

Brilliantly said!

Can I also say that tax credits as an idea are a disgrace. I don't mean that to be negative about those claiming (not their fault) what I mean is that the system props up employers who won't pay a living wage.
Taxpayers money is being used to allow big companies to wriggle out of paying people enough to live on. That's disgraceful. Employers need to pay a decent wage. The problem now is how you change the system- if you take the tax credits away you cause real hardship. Total mess.
Agreed

chatter spot on...

Taxpayers money is being used to allow big companies to wriggle out of paying people enough to live on

Not being able to afford a third child as a stay at home parent is not "wriggle(ing) out of paying people enough to live on".

If the tax credit system is advanced as a way to encourage people who don't want to work but do want three children to have that third (or fourth, or fifth, I mean, its my right, isn't it?), the Tories could simply announce its complete closure and still win an election at a canter.

There is no significant public support for benefits being used to fund people to have deliberately have larger families while not working. The OP would be an effective party political broadcast for the Tories: "Vote for us, we will not pay for her third child".

Views like that expressed by OP helped the Tories win the last election.
Clearly a lot of support out there for restricting tax credits.
Sense of entitlement and a lack of responsibility. Not working but expecting tax payers to fund your large family when many of those same people can't themselves afford the family size they'd like.
So wrong when disabled people are facing cutbacks.

Yabu if you can't afford them don't have them. It really annoys me when people feel entitled to benefits. Get a part time job if you need more cash

There's always a West Wing analogy.

In "Game On", a middle eastern diplomat believes that there would be outcry in America were seen to have been complicit in the assassination of a terrorist suspect. Leo, the White House chief of staff, puts him right.

^You think the President's afraid that if he admitted complicity in Shareef's
death, he would lose votes in this country? To sweep all fifty states, the President would only need to do two things-- blow the Sultan's brains out in Times Square, then walk across the street to Nathan's and buy a hot dog.^

It is assumed in the echo chamber of the Guardian, and almost nowhere else, that cuts to tax credits for people who have larger families, restrictions on amounts of housing benefit ditto and, indeed, the "bedroom tax" are wildly unpopular measures, and all Labour have to do is run a few sad-face accounts of families who are unable to afford another child without benefits and people will immediately yell "no! terrible! I must immediately race to the ballot box to right this wrong!"

Suppose you turned on your TV and saw a PEB which was five minutes of "oh noes, thanks to changes in tax credits I cannot afford a third child". Which party do you think might run that campaign? Labour. Which party do you think would get votes from it, whoever was paying for it? The Tories.

Did that need pointing out cuboid? Nevermind an analogy?

We're quite clearly back in the 80s.

Sorry but I think yabu. We stopped at 2 dc's years ago due to the fact that we couldn't afford anymore. We always wanted 4. Benefits should not come into it. Why should the government fund anyones choice to have another child? I know you say you don't expect it but it comes across in your post that you do.
If it's already a struggle now I would stick with 2. They only get more expensive as they get older.

It's morally wrong to have children and expect other people to pay to raise them. If you cant afford them dont have them!!!

You breed em, you pay.

You have the Life of Riley as a SAHM. Get a bar job in the evenings or a weekend job.

I disagree that tax credits are a bad system intrinsically.

When an employer is deciding whether to create a new job, they have to work out whether the additional revenue that job will help generate is going to justify the costs. A minimum wage is a good thing but it means that jobs that generate less than £8 or £9 /hour aren't going to justify themselves and won't get created. That could slightly slow down economic growth (but we accept that as we have agreed as a society to have a minimum wage) or maybe just concentrates our efforts where we will make a decent return on investment and if an hour of someone's work can only generate £2 of revenue we find something better and more effective to do instead.

Now for someone with no family or extensive financial commitments, £67-£72 for a 10 hour day of work is already on a par with weekly JSA. A 40 hour week of work would be £268-£288 and that's plenty to pay for a room in a shared house in most parts of the UK (probably not london) plus an OK amount for food and expenses. However, that amount of money is thoroughly inadequate if the earner has young children and needs more than a room in a shared house and has several mouths to feed. The "living wage" is theoretically the amount that would cover those expenses. However if you raise the minimum wage to the living wage there are two unintended consequences. Firstly there will be a slice of jobs that don't get created because their return on investment made sense with a lower wage but aren't going to generate sufficient new revenue to justify the higher wage. Secondly and more seriously - where the jobs can be justified on the higher living wage, but those jobs are held by people with no additional responsibilities living in a shared house - those people suddenly become massively richer as they have additional disposable income that their colleagues with children need just to make ends meet. The most likely outcome of additional disposable income sloshing around the economy like this is to cause inflation to basic costs and everything spirals out of control - e.g. the single person can now easily afford the luxury (for them) of a 2 bed flat that for the worker with 3 kids is an essential not a luxury. Therefore by laws of supply and demand: demand has gone up so prices rise and now the worker with 3 kids still can't afford to put a roof over their heads.

With tax credits you can avoid this by keeping the minimum wage at a correct level for a single person without additional costs to be able to meet a basic but adequate and dignified level of living costs, then use a credit system to allow those with additional responsibilities or additional needs to top that income up to a point that meets that same approximate basic but adequate and dignified level of living costs - obviously this being higher than that for a single person.

It ought to all work but as this thread shows it obviously doesn't if it allows people (without disabled or SN children needing round-the-clock care) to choose the luxury of having a full time SAHP at the taxpayer's expense.

Agreed justalittle.

Moreover it's not the government in reality. The money comes from real people who work and pay real taxes. Parents making the "lifestyle choice" to bring more children into the world when they can't afford to finance them themselves are in reality asking me for a blank cheque. And I'm not in a position to give one. So please don't ask.

I think it's "you breed em, you feed em" the cook

Otherwise it's like saying"if you can't do the prison sentence, don't do the crime"

DLA fraud was the lowest fraud rate for all benefits, only 0.7%. I cannot see this dropping with the introduction of PIP

so you believe all figures produced by the goverment then

I am pg with my 4th. We do not receive any help from the government via child tax, working tax or child benefit.

My DH works full time and I work a small part time job.

We can afford to bring up this and our other children without this help comfortably. If I couldn't afford one or even lessen opportunities for the children I already have then I wouldn't have tried to get pregnant.

It's very simple. The rules have changed for the better imo.

well that was like wading into a bucket of sick.

What a load of self righteous, smug, posts.

The last half dozen years have been well spent by the tories, if as a society we're down to the kind of hatred spewed out against someone like the OP.

WTC are an abomination because they are the result of, and perpetuate. employers paying shit wages in order to make more profit. They are the visible sign of an acceptance that business profits come before people's lives, and that is a really really bad society.

I bet some of the more virulent posters don't see any connection between cuts to benefits and the appalling rise in child poverty in this country.

Yes of course, logically and objectively, having a child she cannot afford makes no sense. But we are human beings - or some of us are - and want things that are not 'objectively' the right choice, and we hurt when we feel we can't get what we want. That's all the OP said - not, 'I want another child and I think you lot should pay for it' which appears to be the OP which a lot of the posters read.

omg we all receive help from the government. How did you drive to the shops today? Did you lay that road yourself? Did you pop those lights up along the road to see at night? Did you teach your kids, doctor your kids, yourself? Do you personally take your rubbish to the tip, that you own, yourself?

No. You used what the government paid for out of OUR TAXES. So logically the 'cut the benefits' brigade should also be saying they don't want to pay for the lighting in a part of the UK that they don't travel in - after all, why should you pay for lighting that you don't even use?