To think the abortion rate will increase after April this year?

[RocketQueenP]

When the new rules on tax credits / universal credit come in ie when no one can claim benefit be it top up or otherwise for any more than 2 children

Sadly I am helping a good friend cope who has just had an early abortion, she did not plan the pregnancy and one of the main reasons is she and her DH are low earners/ They already have 2 at school, and won't be able to afford to have this baby. She is devastated and has admitted they could have squeezed another DC in if it wasn't for the new rules. I think this will happen a lot. :(

In times gone by people would adopt out children that were unplanned that they couldn't afford and I really feel that this is what we are headed back to. Not adoption but, you get my drift

I also think the government fully know this and its one of the reasons they have brought it in. Simple population control

You guys are making the fundamental mistake of talking about changes to income tax which applies to employees. You need think broader.

When I talk about changes to tax rules I am talking about changes to non-dom taxes which require anyone living in the UK while earning money abroad being required to assess UK taxes on that income. I am talking about changing the way we tax income from investments. Holding something for 10 years vs 2 years should have very different tax rates. Increases in the value of your primary residence should be taxable above a certain threshold, determined by the number of years you live in the property. Here in the US you pay capital gains tax on your primary home if your home increases in value by more than $250k if single and $500k if married filing joint. It is a very fair threshold.

The top 1% don't have a wage so you need a robust system to get them paying taxes. Saying they only need to pay 20% tax on capital gains isn't fair when employees are paying over 40% on their income. The nom-dom thing is where I would start though. That is a heck of a racket which is just unfair.

I fell pregnant with my third and had a coil fitted. Finances for us were a worry, second child was due to start school and I was returning to work full-time. I am now a full-time mum, my daughter has mostly had second hand items, which has kept expenses down, for me abortion wasn't an option and it wasn't something I felt I could do. There will be mother's though, who have abortions, due to financial position, as they feel there is only one route.

BillSykesDog - plenty of jobs that are appallingly badly paid but can't be done elsewhere... thinking of all the foreign-born care workers and seasonal farm workers, for example... and we have a shortage of teachers and nursery workers. Clearly your "McJobs" that could be done overseas are nevertheless far more appealing than plenty of opportunities unavoidably based in the U.K.

This means it is overwhelmingly in her interests to work less and therefore pay less income tax

Ok so after Mat leave she cuts her hours to 4 days a week (oh if only it were that easy - I can't find well paid part time work, and yes I've asked for it from my employer).

In four years time the child is at school and she goes up to 5 years again. No idea if this means she pays more or less tax over her lifetimes worth of earning.
But there will be others with grandparents caring for kids - or with no kids where childcare is less of a factor.

want2be you make some excellent points.

Bankers and other highly paid workers could easily work from elsewhere, however. The badly paid jobs that can be done overseas moved offshore years ago! That's why China makes all the world's junk for them and creates lovely great clouds of pollution.

Spreadbetting is another one I would tax. If you make a gain you should pay the tax on that gain. It is that simple. With lottery tickets the money raised goes to charity (and is the reason we have done so well in the last two olympic games) so I wouldn't apply a tax to it.

WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid

I work at a medium sized company, around 6-700 employees and I only know 1 mother who came back on full time hours after DC1, and after having DC2 she cut down to 4 days.

It's very common. My boss works 4 days, one of them WFH, and her boss works 3! So it's all the way up the ranks too.

WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid

In the case of my hypothetical mother, she would be more than £3000 worse off each year for working 5 days instead of 4.... The system has got so complicated that there are some pretty weird incentives in fairly common situations.

rhaydhar you clearly work in a more flexible company than me.

Just out of curiousity - is it a financial thing that makes these women work part time. It would have cost me but I still wanted extra time at home.
Also do the blokes choose to go part time.
When these women's kids are at school do they come back full time or stick to their hours.

sorry that's loads of questions and you probably don't know what your colleagues do or why they do it

In the case of my hypothetical mother, she would be more than £3000 worse off each year for working 5 days instead of 4

Is a lot of this childcare costs? I personally would rather money goes towards childcare rather than straight to parents.

No idea of the perverse incentives - part time isn't an option for me so I've not looked into it.

Just out of curiousity - is it a financial thing that makes these women work part time. It would have cost me but I still wanted extra time at home. Generally a mixture of the two "i'm only making X from working the extra day, so that extra day is pretty cheap and i would love and extra day with DC" that was my reasoning anyway and i still got promoted on my part time hours.

Also do the blokes choose to go part time. Very rarely, and usually for doing part time study of a phd not childcare. DH earns significantly more than i do and we couldn't afford to sacrifice one of his days.

When these women's kids are at school do they come back full time or stick to their hours. 9/10 they stick to their hours, the exception is if they get offered a promotion to a very senior position, C level, and as part of negotiations they give up their part time.

Cheers Rhayader I want to work in your company jealous not sick

The main incentive to work part time is to have more time with the family!

Sorry xposted.

Is a lot of this childcare costs? I personally would rather money goes towards childcare rather than straight to parents.

Yes most of the loss is childcare. If childcare was free (and still ignoring transport costs etc) she would be making £17 a week for that extra day worked. Tube from zone 3 to 1 is around £6.60 a day for reference.

But the point im making is that people act in their own best interests. And this woman would be crazy to work 5 days if 4 were on the table.

WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid hahaha, yeah everywhere has their problems, there is a reason that lots of people have kids where I work, v v family friendly. Lots of WFH, flexi-hours, compassionate about sick kids etc and even "Family fun days".

Taxing betting is risky ground. If you tax the gain you should allow the loss. But betting losses are so common, and wins so rare, it would be a net loss in tax revenue. Ultimately the people who win from betting are the bookies - and they have to pay CT like any other business.

Some people will never be able to earn as much as others. Not all people are academic, or able to achieve the higher paid jobs. Does this mean they live a childless life? Children being a luxury item, that just isn't within their reach if on minimum wage?

Some people are academic, and more than capable of getting those higher paid jobs, but lack the education (family reasons/leaving home early) unable to afford university, and ended up in only jobs that pay minimum wage or not much more. They are also unable to be allowed the luxury of children?

I don't advocate having children to receive benefits. I also know that those on benefits are hardly living the high life.

The tory government really have tarnished those on tax credits, as benefit scroungers. Divide and conquer as they say.

I couldn't have left my abusive ex without tax credits.

I am still in receipt of some tax credits, and we both work full time. We don't eat out, don't smoke, hardly drink, holidays (if we have them) are cheap, car is very cheap, no sky tv packages, no iPhones here or contracts. That's generally the impression that people have of those on benefits. Work shy, and spending money like no tomorrow.

It's really sad reading this thread.

Surely there will always be those who cannot cope with life? Those who cannot ever achieve what some people will achieve, because of their shit start in life. I had a shit start, but I have turned it around (but still couldn't cope without child benefit etc).

Instead of turning on each other, we should be turning on the government. The living wage, really is not a living wage. We should be turning on the big corporations that get out of paying taxes. The bankers that get bonuses (even though they caused the mass of problems we are still reeling from). We should be challenging the high rents that the english landlords charge.

I hope that no one who is bitter about their taxes going to those who need it more, ever find themselves in a situation where they need the welfare state to help them out.

Here but for the grace of god.

Simply put, those better off in society, should always help those worse off. There will always be people who abuse the system, but we cannot stop helping the majority of the good hard working poorer people in society, because of those few.

Programmes about benefit 'scroungers' don't help either. Neither do newspapers with stories of '17 kids on benefits, and still want more'. They are isolated cases, and just add more hatred and cause more divide.

Brexit won't affect the government, they will affect the working poor. Prices will rise, wages will not increase, but the politicians will be fine. They will give themselves pay rises, of course, and congratulate themselves on a job well done.

BillSykesDog - plenty of jobs that are appallingly badly paid but can't be done elsewhere... thinking of all the foreign-born care workers and seasonal farm workers, for example... and we have a shortage of teachers and nursery workers. Clearly your "McJobs" that could be done overseas are nevertheless far more appealing than plenty of opportunities unavoidably based in the U.K.

Yes. But pretending that they are the only low paid jobs is a bit ridiculous. Plus unskilled labour which is needed for a specific task can still be accessed via things like seasonal working holiday visas. We have plenty of call centre workers and chuggers and cleaners and gardeners etc whose jobs would simply disappear if there wasn't the huge pool of low wage labour. And the only people who would really lose out from that is the wealthy people who employ them. Who might have to pay better wages or clean their own house. And in all likelihood wages and conditions would improve for all those people who were doing the jobs that have to be done here.

But I can feel we're about to get into the territory of a left winger arguing that low wages and poor conditions are a good thing. See it all the time on here and it's a very sad indictment of what the left has become.

The reason why so many jobs are so badly paid is exactly because they are topped up by tax credits. Big companies don't need to pay a liveable wage when they know that other taxpayers will subsidise their low paid employees and the government don't care as so many MPs want cushy jobs with these companies once they retire from politics, so they suck up to them.

If tax credits got abolished tomorrow do you honestly think wages would just go up? People in low wages jobs live in absolutely appalling conditions now. You should see some of the people who work on building sites. Sleeping 12 to one small room on mattresses shared in shifts commuting 4 hours a day. They do it because doing it for two years will set them up for life in their home countries, but people who are settled here can't raise families or have a decent standard of living for the same wages.

As long as you're bringing in more and more people to artificially raise the price of housing and stagnate wages the poorest are going to suffer.

mother there were no tax credits in the mid to late 90s but there were full time jobs being advertised in my local Job Centre for £50 a week.

And childless/childfree ppl were expected to take them because the attitude was "you havent got kids to feed so it doesnt matter"

At least when working tax credits came in it evened things up a bit.

Simply put, those better off in society, should always help those worse off.

And they always will, because we'll never be a tax or welfare free society.

Doesn't mean we have to support the ever increasing welfare bill.

It's also misleading to suggest that bludgers are "the minority". I bet we can all point to at least one person who depends on benefits and has no intention of improving their situation. I certainly can.

To quote the Economist: "Though most of them seem to end up in newspapers, in 2011 there were just 130 families in the country with 10 children claiming at least one out-of-work benefit. Only 8% of benefit claimants have three or more children. What evidence there is suggests that, on average, unemployed people have similar numbers of children to employed people ... it is not clear at all that benefits are a significant incentive to have children.

batteries Here in the US and in other countries you pay a tax on the gain you make from gambling. Here in the US you pay income tax on prizes. Nothing is 'free' and nor should it be. You are given a goodie bag worth $200k at the oscars when you attend. That needs to go on your tax return if you are an American resident for tax purposes. It is why most people who are paying American taxes don't pick them up if they aren't earning. The cost is about $40k straight to the Treasury.

I would love to see something like that in the UK.