To be pissed off at the new tax free childcare

[childcarechallenge]

NC for this.

We have two DC in childcare and live in London. I'm starting a new job next month and my salary is 48K, after tax, student loan, childcare costs and tube to work plus a few other generally working expenses (clothes etc) I've worked out that I will take home less than £200 a month.

DH earns a good salary which is good because we almost completely rely on his salary for rent, bills etc. He just received a large bonus which pushes him over 100K which is the new limit for the new tax free childcare scheme from the government.

Essentially, between 100K and 120K after tax, student loan, the loss of his "tax free allowance" which is clawed back over 100K, and the fact that we will not be able to claim £4000 back on our childcare because he is no longer under 100K (This applies to BOTH of us because of his salary) means that of that £20K we are actually only £1800 better off. AIBU to think that this is complete robbery - DH works extremely hard, very long hours (sometimes 70 hour weeks) in a high stress environment and the government seem to take an obscene amount of his salary.

We have an opportunity coming up to move to a lower tax country in a year or so with his job and this just makes me really want to take it, AIBU?

And the government can get away with this tax arrangement. It's no more or less unfair.

Are you suggesting that a citizen has as much bargaining power with the government as an employer has with the labour pool?

OP I do totally understand it's frustrating to lose that much money but I share the frustration of others I admit to some transference because I've just got what I view as a good job at 39 k a year ....I'm. Moving to the outskirts of London and have two children as a single parent ....so it is frustrating to read your post as much as I genuinely sympathise it's annoying

Ultimately you're in a higher tax bracket and the rules of a reasonable society is that it would be unfair to tax lower earners at higher levels and tax is proportioned to be part of your income.....so as frustrating as it is I'm sure youre not suggesting you should be allowed to keep more and lower earners should keepisode less

Ultimately there is also the fact that at 148k a year to bring home what you're saying you must be making lifestyle choices that impact your spending .....ultimately to live within means we all have to make sacrifices if you house not to then fair enough but you won't get sympathy then for havignore less disposable income

You can look at other childcare options , you could look at less expensive housing like the rest of us do , so whilst I admit that it's some of my transference I can't help but feel that you are moaning about a situation that is somewhat of your making

You can be a middle manager on 20k or a middle manager on 100k. The stress and pressure may be just as high. Outside London you just don't get those high salaries that often.

The tax anomaly isn't arbitrary. The only way to make it 'fair' would be to taper the £4000 childcare subsidy. Tapering is more expensive to administer, meaning that they would have to start the taper at a lower income point to cover costs. Say perhaps at £80k. Then the OP's DH would already have not been getting most of the subsidy before the bonus if it were done 'fairly.'

Long response deleted because, well, what's the point?
Have a instead.

You have no way of knowing of the relative levels of talent of someone on 100k compared to someone on 20k.

I'd gather their skills are more profitable to their employer. What assumption would you make?

Very long term MN'er here and have to say nothing has ever quite boiled my piss as much as what have just seen on this thread.

And btw, I'm not even beginning to refer to the OP here.

THIS:

frogmellla 'Your own fault for going to working and dumping your kids.'

FUCK. RIGHT. OFF. How very fucking dare you? As by it's very definition you are not referring to your position vis OP's tax situation but slating every single one of us who has had the temerity to keep our feet just about in the workplace. What an utterly cuntish and offensive - to all of us who have kids and do or have worked - comment.

Surely the point is that the DH, being in a position of great privilege, is not going to end up as a carer on £67 a week.

Are well paid people immune from having severely disabled children for whom no childcare exists?

It's just one of those unfair things in life that we need to suck up. There are many others. Probably best not to whinge on about it when people just as clever and important and talented as her family are living hand to mouth.

OP can start a petition about it. The government are far more likely to be sympathetic to her as a potential voter than they are to carers, teachers and HCPs as a whole.

Just to add if you can't afford to pay out £20k in childcare in the first place then you don't get the £4k tax deduction.

That wealthy people are engaged in very high levels of nepotism!

I went to a 'top' university. The nepotism was unbelievable. The people there were generally not more skilled than people at other universities. In fact, many of them were thick, but had huge educational advantages prior to university.

You have absolutely no grounds to make that assumption, Museum.

I'd gather their skills are more profitable to their employer. What assumption would you make?

That they are in different parts of the country for starters.

Why do you need new clothes every single month !! Sounds like you need a reality check and learn how to cut your cloth accordingly. Their are people struggling to survive on £57 a week looking for jobs that don't exist and you want £4000 handed to you for free just because you popped a few kids out and don't want to pay for them out of your own money ???? What planet are you on OP ?

Six, you are taking that totally out of context of the original point which was that the DH could choose to take on a lower paid job outside of London.

FWIW I agree this tax anomaly is unfair when you look at it the way the OP does. And she obviously has every right to go to work for many of the different reasons. But childcare is a joint expense so she should see it as part of the household income, not a skewed version of her own when she's taken off her travel, her SL and clothes budget as well. If she doesn't actually want to work, and the family are going to be worse off, perhaps she shouldn't.

I await the big reveal that OP and hubs (yes, I SAID IT) are on a combined £150k at age 25.

You have absolutely no grounds to make that assumption, Museum.

I'm assuming that the employer wants to maxmise his profit and would trade in the 100K employee for the 20K employee if he could. What part of that do you disagree with?

And they're not going to be worse off in financial terms, they will have an extra £200 a month for shared pot.

I'm a bit scared of this thread... but...

I think part of the problem here is expectation, isn't it? I think that a combined salary of £148k should mean new cars, fancy house and some luxury holidays. But actually once you've been taxed, paid for childcare, cost of living in an expensive area where your well-paying job is etc. etc., you're looking at one second hand car, small rented flat and holidays in the UK with relatives. There's nothing wrong with that and your life is going to be a hell of a lot easier than the lives of people earning less, but it doesn't look the way we (or at least I) think a £148k life should look.

There's a tax trap for those earning between 100,000 - £120,000 that sees them pay 60% tax when people earning more only pay 40% tax. It was a Gordon brown special that's never been corrected. But nobody really seems to have sympathy for high earner issues like that!

Iwasam - hmmm ok calm down?

We went to good universities but i don't think you can call the advantage of getting a good degree nepotism, nepotism is when a job goes to a worse candidate who's known to the employer and is worse than the other candidates. Saying very high earners got there through nepotism is just as bad a generalisation as saying they work harder than the less well off.

Because a) outside of London jobs are paid a lot less, and b) it's not that simple to guarantee a good candidate when recruiting for a role, is it?