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?

For those that are saying see ya. Jobs are not always replaced here. If the tax take is too high then jobs are lost, many firms will place senior executive roles where the senior executive wants to be based. There is already articles in the press in Scotland that people do not want to move there because of the crazy levels of stamp tax applied through LBTT which is much more punitive that the English system. There is also the problem with Scotland not raising the personal tax thresholds in line with England. I'm based in Scotland and moving away is definitely on the cards when my children have been through school, I def can't move house at the moment because of stamp tax, so will move when we downsize.

Tax does influence behaviour we may not like it but it does, at certain levels it will drive people away. It has been proven that the thresholds do matter. When the 50p tax rate was introduced the amount collected in tax receipts fell.

Higher earners already pay more. The reality that 60% of tax payers are net recipients. The top 300,000 tax payers pay 30% of all tax receipts.

Guns au-pairs are really for wrap around care with older kids. We considered a live in nanny but would have to move to a bigger place so wasn't really an option.

tbh i don't think you should benefit from the scheme at all. you get paid enough as it is, taypayers should not be subsidising households where they are bringing in 150k a year.

Higher earners already pay more.

Good.

This I wasn't aware of. I'm a SAHM and we do struggle my DH earns a base of 85k and uncertain if bonus will take him over 100k. We do have costs such as kids clubs/lessons but I don't see those as extras we can drop. YANBU OP i see entirely where you are coming from. It seems the harder you work the less advantages there are. Also to people who say oh you won't get any sympathy on those salaries my DH does NOT sit on his arse all day. He is in a high risk role, it's a really stressful job and he deserves the money he earns due to the years of education and training and commitment he has put into it. We have been poor. We have lived in a room in a shared house wirh a sink. We certainly didn't get to this point without us both working 15-16 hour days. I'm on a break for the children and like the OP will probably return to a c50k job but that's only because I worked hard to get there and I come from a very very working class background. Grew up in a crime ridden inner city area where a lot of my childhood friends ended up with different lives BUT we had the same education and opportunity. Anyway OP YANBU you should be able to reap the financial rewards of your hard work

Unfortunately MIL lives around a 2 hour drive away and works. We can't ask an Au pair to sleep on the sofa! Housing is bloody expensive in London. Getting a 3/4 bedroom house would be more like 3K a month.

My main fear is being cut off from family, with DH working long hours, in an alien place where i don't speak the language with two children. DH works for a smallish company and there are no other British expats so we would need to build a community some other way, i'm not sure how?

I think you are in a privileged position and are greedy tbh. It's ridiculous to say childcare is just your expense; it is both of yours. Your DH is overpaid compared with many equally talented and hardworking people because his job is valued more than theirs.

So just childcare and rent for the above poster comes in at 4000k a month. That's not including any other outgoings. That alone comes to nearly £50k a year meaning you would need a gross salary of 70k just to cover that. That's with no pension contributions. Add on all your bills, council tax, food and all the other household costs and suddenly people may realise how ridiculously expensive London is.

Fuck me!!! Have my first words truly fail me

childcare it sounds like this overseas challenge is coming one way or another so you both need to put some thought into it, and make working decisions in light of that. Do you see what I mean? You can build a network, but it does take effort and time. In your shoes I would try and look for book groups for adult time (also likely to be mums) and research playgroups and other childcare meetups in the area you're moving to. But real friendship can take time to evolve (depends on the person, a few friends I've clicked with quickly and I'm not good in general with people).

Do your diamond shoes hurt too OP?

My DHs additional tax this year was more than I could earn in 15 years in my last job. Do we sit round moaning about it? Of course not! Paying a lot of income tax is part and parcel of living in the U.K. & having a high income. And our taxes are needed for roads, police, judiciary, schools, armed forces, supporting the vulnerable etc -all things you might find lacking in a country with lower taxes.

Plenty of people work very hard for very long hours and make a lot less than your DH and you do.

24.4 per cent to 27.5 per cent, meaning that 300,000 people pay more than a quarter of the nation's income tax."

this isn't MAJORITY!!!!

27.5% is just over a quarter

I am not earning anywhere as your DH but more than you. I also paid a lot of money for my childcare in the past.

You can still sign up for childcare vouchers (old scheme).

I think it is a flaw in the system that he will be paying more tax than someone who earns more than him- that is the problem.

Saying that though you can put up to 40k per year (I think?) In your pension, not great if you need the money now though obvs.

fakenews Thanks, Hong Kong is most likely and I understand there is a big expat community. I know one of the hardest things about being an expat is that just as you make a friend they move back home. This has to be one of the best times to be an expat in terms of keeping in contact with family - Facetime, cheap flights etc, so there is that.

Antimatter, to say that the 1% of people paying 27.5% of tax is "not the majority" is pretty crazy, can't you accept that it is a lot. Its obviously right that they should pay more, i'm not arguing that, but its wrong to say that low earners pay the most tax.

You mention that you are very young. I assume that this means that you and your DH and in your twenties. Most people your age are in graduate entry jobs or still studying or training and accruing debt, whilst you and your DH are embarking early on high-earning careers. Presumably you made a choice to have DC young, to have more than one, and to have a small gap between them. You must have realised that you would have to suck up some short-term pain, but this is literally only going to last five years until your youngest is in school.

If you want to ease the pain by going abroad for those years then YWNBU, but you are right to consider the potential for isolation (and don't for goodness' sake imply that it would be the UK's loss because HMRC won't get any taxes from you for a few years. That's just insulting).

FWIW, childcare is much cheaper out there; friends who taught in a HK international school on much lower salaries than yours were able comfortably to afford a nanny for their two DC and only came back to the UK once they were of school age as they wanted them in the British system. If you could get a visa then you could potentially work, although of course it depends on your field.

the good thing about expat communities though is a pool of people who've all lost their network. Moving to a town where a lot of people use family networks and have established friend sets can be harder. The other thing is you might make friends that end up living all over the world, which makes things interesting. I think it's a nice thing to do for a time.

Yesterday it was entitled wealthy pensioners who came under attack. Today its entitled high earners questioning tax free childcare. Let's have a game of bingo for the rest of the week.

Before any one else does, I'll give my first to myself!

not majority of taxes, I think use of language is very important as always

think if you don't see that this is incorrect use of language you are more likely to see yourself as a victim

we are all paying a lot of taxes (but less than other European countries) and I think the context is always important
yours is actually having a choice
I hope you always have choice and enjoy that freedom.

You need to look at your living costs OP. £148k is a dream combined salary for most households in the UK, and they manage.

Frankly if I was in your position I'd get out of London. Utter madness to pay 2K a month for a flat. Not to mention all the other London-inflated costs of childcare, travel etc. Seriously you might well both be better off taking lower-paid jobs outside the capital.

yy antimatter too many people use negative constraints to make decisions 'i had to do this because x' and end up feeling like they had no choice/victim. It's true Op can choose not to work while her DC are small, yes she'll find it a bit harder to get back to work in 2-3 years but plenty of SAHP do manage it.

Well we earn a lot less, admittedly not London based but have always paid our own childcare so suck it up!! We won't benefit either because it started after our need for childcare stopped - you don't have children and expect to get all their needs paid for, you're supposed to consider that when you decide to have children.

Wow..............................

YANBU in the slightest. I agree with your point entirely. You're being discriminated against on the basis of earnings.