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'?

and no-one had to bribe me back either. i want to work, i've always worked. can't imagine doing otherwise, although i have twice had to claim benefits and it was a miserable existence.

I wasn't implying or intending to imply anyone who works or claims WTC/CTC was bribed back but to some it might make the difference to staying at home or working if they can see a visible difference in their income after tax, childcare etc.

Perhaps I should have written it is more of a carrot than a stick encouragement/bonus but that might not sound right either??!

actually in my experience, if someone simply doesn't want to work then bugger all is going to tempt them. certainly not tax credits.

oh, is it just me they want to lure back to work then lol - my form has 2 bits to it, the first is wtc and goes: wtc entitlement £3600 or whatever, amount actually entitled to £0. doesn't everyone's say something like that?
I guess the money could come from not invading countries on the other side of the world for example, which we always seem to find enough spare cash for, but that's another thread.

How do teachers get extra help with childcare?

I did not getany help with childcare and was even using the nursery attached to the school.

My year eleven students tried to petiion the head to give me a discount!

colditz is right about the aims of the government although perhaps not about the motives of the people working at the chalkface.

I do some work in eary years linked with sure start initiativesd and it all comes down to one things , helping mothers go back to work and often mothers who can barely look after themselves never mind theior kids and have a job. In practice it doesnot always work as the people putting the policies into action do not agree with pushing mums into work.

Expat got it right!

WTC are there to help people out of the benefit trap, whereby the loss of benefits on going into work is greater than earnings. WTC is supposed to put you on a neutral position.

However, there was also an enhancement on this when it was determined that to reduce child poverty there should be a minimum household income required to support families.

In this case, single parents needed more help than two working parents, so if both parents work their individual earning thresholds are lower than if only one parent works or it is a single income family.

Think my TC + work puts me on about £16K for me and 2 kids.If I worked f/t it would drop to about £15K (and f/t in my job is only 28 h so misses the over 30 h rate)

claiming tax credits is no easy ride either. the fact that the help is there is great. its the difference between me having to live on benefit and wanting to work, or being able to work.

not so great when its not paid on time. i waited three months for it to go through when i started working again (after redundancy). three months is a long time to be working on minus.

this may also be a point to consider. when i was made redundant the second time i was out of work for 10 months. this was not for lack of trying, there were just no jobs available to me then. i paid £24 a week out of my benefit to keep my dd in her private nursery for one day a week, to ensure she still had a place when i did get another job. childcare is like gold dust here.

I thought that the nursery vouchers you get from work come out of your salary before it's taxed, so you're not getting the whole amount for nothing? But may be wrong as have never had them myself.

more you earn the more you get?? how do you work that out when multiple people on here have told you that once you earn over the threshold as a couple you get nothing? It is the people just below the threshold who are by far better off as they get help and are still on fairly decent salaries, and I really don't see what it has to do with being a sahm or working mother as the threshold is a fixed amount which could easily be breached by either the father or mother alone. If you are over it i.e have "more" you get absolutely bugger all from anyone to help raise your kids so only very wealthy people are going to be significantly better off - and they get given nothing (except £18 a week child benefit which everyone gets, irrespective of earnings)

In my book you are better off as you are effectively being paid (even the minimum) to not have to go and do a crappy job and suffer a long commute away from your kids like others do, with all the expense that entails. I work becasue I have to to pay the mortgage, you seem to be the lucky one as you could clearly choose not to.

Childcare vouchers come from your own earnings, they are not given to you, you just don't pay tax on £243 per month of your income as long as you use it for nursery, child minder or nanny (i.e not family members).

although you don't pay tax or NI on childcare vouchers, the disadvantage is you don't pay tax or NI IYKWIM. It doesn't count toward pension or (more significantly for most of us) maternity pay if you are on a low income.

I know you can never have a perfect system, but one thing I don't get about TC is that once you get past about £20k income, you get the same amount up to the threshold which is somewhere about £50k (or it all was a few years ago). I think there's a bloody great difference between a houshold income of 20k and one of 50k in terms of mortgages etc.

There are four things here IRRC

1. Child Tax Credit - this is the basic £40 ish a month, which is the minimum amount. It kind of replaces the married person allowence, took it away from married couples and targeted the same money at people with children

1b) additional CTC which is paid to low income families whether one or two parents are working - it goes down as earning increase. At about £23k it becomes the minimum £40 a week as above and satays lik that for all families earning under £50Kish

2. Working Tax Crdits - this is the 'top up' payements that are paid to low earners to help towards childcare bills, it only kicks in when (in a couple) both parents are working more than 16 hours a week, or in the case of single parents when they are working mroe than 16 hours a week. It pays UP TO 80% of childcare (up to a limit of £175 a week)

3. Childcare vouchers - bought by employees so that get tax free childcrae. The money is taken out before tax, up to a max of £55 a week.

So with other benefits and things there is much confusion, however I do think working parents should get additional support if they choose to work. If you can afford to be a SAHM then personally I feel that is your choice and you shouldn't moan, I would like teh choice, but I am the main breadwinner. Yes we get £40 a week ish, plus child benefit fo £25 ish a week (2 kids) I earn over the £23k and under £50k, with dh earnongs I guess we are near the £50k mark, but he is self employed and once childcare is paid for probably earns about £30 a week!!

Dragonhart, you say in your OP that your friend gets tax credits and you don't because your DP alone earns more than your friend and her DP between them.

So: she gets tax credits and you don't because YOUR HOUSEHOLD HAS MORE INCOME THAN HERS.

Nothing to do with being a SAHM/WOHM, by your account. I don't see what reason you think you have to feel hard done by.

I had to pick up on this particular point Xen....

"Plenty of divorced single mothers don't do a stroke of work with chidlren age 12 and over and live off maintenance for life in idleness - not just single mother equals work or benefits. Massive numbers leech off hard working men."

"Plenty" is a very unquantifiable figure, and, so makes your statement a little 'sweeping/general'. I am sure there are some, but, without facts or figures, I think it's a point best left out, tbh. (Aside from the obvious the obvious point of running a home on your own (no paid help) and looking after young adults is equally challenging, and not an "idle" past-time).

It was more "...Massive numbers leech off hard working men." Are you referring to tax payers here? Or Fathers? The former suggests that men are the only major tax payers which is just not true. The latter - well - Fathers are responsible for the upkeep of their children as much as the Mother and they have to do their bit, the same as the mother (see comment regarding "idleness").

If I have misunderstood your point, please could you clarify?

Anyone whose husband pays them maintenance of enough to live on and with school age children chooses not to work often when the ex husband is struggling to afford his new home and possibly a new family whilst the ex wife with older children is simply choosing not to work. That's all I meant and there are a lot of them about although I think the long term trend will not be to award fit adults maintenance for themselves for life in due course. There are men who have the children 50% of the time, every other week who have non working wives who live on the maintenance too. Anyway that's a separate topic and only affects those women who don't work in marriage and earn less than their husbands

Think yourself lucky you get anything at all. We don't and we both work very hard.

Oh and it's not because we earn far too much either, combined we earn less than 27,000 a yr but wftc refuse to pay us anything until dd2 is 2 because they apprently overpaid us in 2003 - a long time before dd2 came along.

I have to work really hard to get enough to pay everything with, last year i worked two jobs totalling 65hrs a week and i worked 30 days in a row at one point plus looking after both children.

well we pay £1300 a month in childcare

i am self employed so no childcare vouchers
dh's employers won't do the childcare scheme as too much admin so he doesn't get it either

no WTC as dh's earnings are over the limit

feel like i am missing out here... why shouldn't we get some help with the childcare costs? they're crippling.

oh and that £1300 is for 3 days/week for 2 DCs!

Fio, it's not necessarily the case that you get the bare minimum if you are on over £23K - it also depends on how many children you have as you get an additional amount for each child and more again if you have a child under one.

i know... but that is the norm around here (SW London)

am seriously debating whether we should sell up and move. housing, childcare, transport everything is just too much. we could have a much better quality of life elsewhere.

and the borough's primary schools were oversubscribed by 230 children this intake! so now we are having to get on waiting lists for private school as a "back up" as i'm not driving an hour each way in the morning for school!

maybe i should start a "where shall we live?" thread