feeling that tax credits are totally biased towards working mums?

[Dragonhart]

I am a SAHM and I get the min working tax credit as my DH earns just over the min for getting more help.

I was talking to my friend yesterday who works 4 days a week as a teacher (their combined salaries are just below the top of the band of getting any money) and I was saying what I got now we have two children. I get just over £40 plus about £40 baby element. When dd is 1 and I have two under 3 I will get £40.

She told me that she gets about £160 a months towards childcare in vouchers on her and her husbands paypacket (not sure if this is classed as tax credit?) and £75 permonth for her only ds in tax credits.

I am not making a coment about whether or not people choose to work as I stongly believe that everyone should have a choice to do what is right for them.

I just think that I should be supported in the same way as working mums. Surely I am my childrens 'childcare'?

I've looked at this thread but not all of it as it's rather long as you'll appreciate. Let me briefly explain my situation - my dh earns too much to allow us to claim any tax credits so approx 70% of my wage goes on childcare. I don't have to work for the money and for a while I didn't but then realised I had thrown my career away - I had to start at the beginning again after spending 6 years working my way up. Not working will have affected my pension when it comes to retiring and so there are more implications than just needing the money to live off now. I'm not complaining about this situation but I feel I'm not being encouraged back into the workplace at all - not sure what the answer is really

NKF - the world over, children cost society a lot of money - lower effective tax rates, free school provision, more medical care, playgrounds... But they also cost their parents a lot of money. Childless by choice people have lots more disposable income by all measures. AND pay more tax.

As we know, we can't have it all...

No, Anna because that suggests children and childcare are women's issues and I know loads of men who are very involved, many earn less than their wives. Even 22 years ago my ex husband was as likely to be advertising for the nanny and in on interviews as I was particularyl as he's a teacher. We need the benefits etc to be sexually neutral.

As I said below I'd prefer 15% tax rates and few benefits, a very simple, slim system. We used to tax husband and wife as one person in the UK, husband's signed the tax return and often women because they were female and didn't have familes to support were paid up to 50% what a man doing the same job did. We don't want anything like that. Employers off men and women childcare vouchers when the offer them at all.

The person who said what she got extra for working is just the sort of useful information there is. On a personal basis if you can get yourself or your children on to salaries where they earn large sums then you avoid some of these probllems. I think Anna said she had lots of savings probably by having a good job before and may be having children a bit later than I did at 22 so that benefits her now. I am benefited from picking well paid work and sticking at it whilst the children were babies. Other people marry rich men. All those things help you have more choice about work or not.

There is also an argument that choice makes people unhappy and when you grew up knowing you either worked in the pit or a shop and life was mapped out you were happier because no choices, no confusion, just a set pattern.

eleusis - "tax rate" or "tax band" is the income tax bracket you fall into. Yours and your husband's may well be the same.

"Effective tax rate" is the %age of your total income you pay in tax, SS etc.

Xenia - you and I agree on this one. I think tax should be totally gender neutral and independent of lifestyle choices - I hate the idea that governments are giving people financial incentives for living their lives one way or another. That's Orwellian.

xenia - my dh was going to get childcare vouchers to keep in a lower tax bracket but was told it may affect his pension so at the moment we're steering clear. It is such a complicated system

But Anna, I am fairly certain that no family earning 60k would get any tax credits of any kind. The element that goes towards childcare is only paid where the income is low enough. So a more sensible analogy is that one parent earning 20k and the other parent earning 15k get paid a small amt of their childcare costs back. Because if they didn't their family income would be too low due to having to pay childcare. If one parent didn't work at all they wouldn't cope financially.

Mmm yes. I don't work. DH does. We get tax credits. Therefore his effective tax rate is lower than it would be if we didn't have children. Tax credits are for families - not 'working women'. The childcare element of the tax credits is for families where both parents work (or not if what Cristina says is correct). Or where one parent works if the family is a single parent one.

OrmIrian - I'm deliberately just illustrating a principle and absolutely not talking real figures.

I know you are. But so was I. I was emphasising that to earn working tax credit childcare element you have to be have a small enough income to genuinely need that money to help mitigate the costs of working, whilst not being in a position where one partner could earn enough for the other to stay at home.

OrmIrian - OK, but why should families on very low incomes be subsidised for having both parents work through childcare tax credits, but the family that wants to live on one income and have a SAHP not receive subsidy? Do you really believe that to be good policy?

Because MOST of the time, the low income families have to have BOTH people working just to survive, Anna, not a choice of living on one income - the one income is so low a family cannot live on it.

That's the difference.

God, actually can we have you running the country anna- then everyone could give up work and we would have no infrastucture or economy, but we could all skip around with our kids and swan off to play tennis whilst the children were looked after for free!

Some people!

I just take the right wing position - low tax and spend your money how you choose and don't leave it to the Government to spend £6b on Iraq/Afghanistan/single fathers etc etc

As long as adults whetehr gay or straight choose to live together with their children there will be anomalies.

In the UK most people get a single person tax allowance which without looking it up is about £6k a year tax free to set against earnings. We used to have a married man's allowance which could be transferred to non working wives or husbands but then we separated out tax and saw adults as adults which was the right thing to do. So if a man earns £10k a year and his wife nothing he gets £6k allowance against his tax. If instead they each earn 5k a year they pay not tax as they both use teir £6k band. That's fine. That's right and proper and fair. Women are not property of their husbands to be taxed as such. if they want to return to 1860s England had give all their assets to their husband on marriage and not be able to own property in their own right then they need to emigrate to some of the less progressive states - the Taliban I'm sure do a good line in women as property of their men.

exp, that's not actually true though it is as plenty of people survive on benefits. Couples decide they want to run a car or afford a bottle of wine a week and so both work but they would not in the UK in 2007 with the man on the minimum wage starve if the mother stays home therefore it's a choice.

Or we can have the situation we have today with lots of feral children running wild because there are no family structures to bring them up.

Obviously, this is not the case for anyone on MN.

But when all women work, especially in low income families, what happens to children?

This is nothing to do with lower tax for women! You don't have to have a vagina to apply for tax credits. They are for 'working families' - ie any set up with children.

K, Xenia, so then DH and I should just quit my low income full time job and his low income job and live off benefits.

Cool! I'd love to! Sign me up.

B**locks.

Try supporting four people in a min wage job, even with one person staying home to look after the kids, and see how far you get, even with tax credits and housing benefit.

I'd like to see some of you try before you insinuate that a person who is paying tax on that min wage - and they will if they're working full time - should top up the life of a stay at home parent whose partner actually makes enough for them to live off, bar nice holidays, pony lessons, etc.

When all women work, some of them work at looking after other people's children. I don't think there are hordes of feral preschool children roaming the streets.

Wow, this one took off then!
Interesting debate.
Have got flu so brain not up to par - am still pulling jaw off floor at the idea of paying a SAHP via tax credit so that they would have time to themselves for dentist etc - it's not that time isn't precious, of course it is, but how do working parents have more time to themselves? The vast majority must surely finish work then sprint to collect DC from expensive childcare for the rest of the day - how does that build in free time???
I work part-time, by the way, theoretically to have the 'best of both worlds,' so I feel that I can't do my job properly or spend enough time with my LOs

And I think living in France you actually know very little about how tax credits work. If you earn £60,000, believe me, you do NOT get childcare costs paid!

exp, I just meant people do. I certainly didn't mean it was easy.

I never ever understood why we introduced these complicated tax credit things which have been such a mess. I was almost glad I earned more than qualified so I never had to grapple with the forms. Even my sister was saying this weekend she was over paid £6k by them by mistake - their mistake not hers. Why can't we make things simpler? Tax and benefits just get more and more and more complicated. One thing child benefit always has done has been simple and very cheap to administer. Universal tax free benefit payable to all resident parents regarldess of income in recognition of the fact that having children is of some use to society and not just an extra hobby like golf. Pity at £17 a week or whatever it is not near the £500 a week or whatever a nanny costs plus the child food clothes costs etc. I wonder what the average pre-school child actually costs in terms of lost mother's wage or childcare costs plus food etc plus needing a bigger house/car.

I never understood it, either, Xenia.

I always thought, 'Why not just tax very low-income people less?' or 'Why not just raise the personal threshhold?'

But that's not how Gordon Brown's mind works.

Can't help but wonder how much it costs to administer (badly, usually) these incredibly complicated systems.