To ask why child benefits is means tested in England?Do you agree?

[ddshocker]

Just that really? Why is it means tested in the U.K.? Do you think this is fair considering the financial abuse some women can be suffer even if their dh is a high learner!
In Ireland it's not means tested at all and it is double the U.K. amount...why is the U.K. so adamant in making it unfair!?

I was paying a lot more than 3k tax. That's based on today's tax codes. This was a while ago.

It's really unfair. I missed it a lot when it was taken away. Sure we were over the threshold but I also gave up work to care for the children so my salary had disappeared overnight. And I'd paid lots of tax for 15 years. I really welcomed having little bit of money to spend on the children and myself. What really annoyed me was my friend who worked and so did her husband. Their income was £25k more than ours but they could claim it as they were both just under the threshold.

@MilkTwoSugarsThanks

Tbh I do think anyone with a household income of £57K needing child benefit is a bit of a piss take...

But families on £95 get it and people on £60 don’t

@Louisianagumbo then she was probably paying more too

@Louisianagumbo

I was paying a lot more than 3k tax. That's based on today's tax codes. This was a while ago.

You still weren't subsidising your friend, you were hardly even subsidising yourself.

@Louisianagumbo I don't know how else to tell you this but you were in no way contributing....EVEN theoretically as you were a NEGATIVE contributor!

@Louisianagumbo Have you by any chance borrowed Diane Abbotts calculator for your calculations?

[quote ddshocker]@Louisianagumbo then she was probably paying more too [/quote]
I get you. But that's not the point. She could have earned a million and she'd have paid more than me. But she'd still have been getting money that she didn't need. And I was still contributing to it.

if you’re earning less than £35,000, then you’re not paying enough tax to pay for yourself. There’s no way that your tax is paying anything at all to fund anyone else.
Those are today's figures. I'm talking about quite a while ago. She's got grandchilden now.

@Louisianagumbo you weren't contributing to it though...you weren't even contributing to your own child benefit! Seriously I'm done now. Head...brick wall!!

[quote saleorbouy]**@Louisianagumbo Have you by any chance borrowed Diane Abbotts calculator for your calculations?[/quote]
😂😂😂 I know how much it costs to fund 10,000 police officers! After all I'm paying for them too!! Hehe.

Yabu

Benefits should be for those in greatest need.

Child allowance should be for those with children.
Likewise disability benefit for those with disabilities.
Earnings should not come into the equation, if you contribute to the pot you should be allowed to receive from the pot otherwise there's not point paying into it.

A family with two parents earning 48k each take home 72k. A single earner earning 96k takes home 64k.

Child benefit for 2 children is 1.8k per year.

So family with two earners is significantly better off than a single earning household.

It should be also noted that the calc is done net of pension contributions... So both parents would be earning ( at the extreme end) 89k each but throwing 40k into pension each year and still be eligible for child benefit.

@BobbinHood

Why were giving your friend money? Don't be so deliberately obtuse. I was subsidising her lifestyle through the benefit system.

I’m not being obtuse. If you were paying tax on a £25k income and they were paying tax on a £100k income in no way were you subsidising her lifestyle. You were paying tax. They were paying more tax, even if you deduct CB from that.

I also asked the same question.

She is your 'friend'? If she had children, presumably she was entitled to the Child Benefit. So what if she had holidays, good for her. Sour grapes are not attractive.

This isn't true or necessary anymore this was fazed out years ago. For at least the last 5 years you have just had to call up and tell them that you did not want to claim child benefits but want ni credits recorded. No need to put through a claim at all.

Sorry that was in response to 09 lanthanum earlier point.

"But the combined salary means both parents are working, so more likely to need childcare etc. the other household could earn more if the other person went out to work too. You don’t benefit from being able to afford to only have one parent out at work."

You are making the assumption that both parents can go out to work. I cannot through having a disabled child ( for whom childcare doesn't exist). I' m not particularly bothered about not getting CB as I know we are relatively well off but we are in the category who earn just too much to get it whereas others with a much higher household income still do.

@makingitalladdup

I'm torn on this one TBH. We are one of those families where we each earn a bit under the threshold, meaning we can still claim CB even with a fairly good joint household income. It doesn't seem fair that others whose household income could be as much as 50k less can't claim.

And I think households with a £100k gross income probably don't need CB.

I suspect the PP who said women being financially abused may not be able to keep CB anyway is right.

Generally I think benefits should be means tested but I don't think the current CB approach is fair. It should be based on household income if parents are living together.

Agree completely with this. The way it’s set up is totally unfair.

I say that as someone who will never have an income close to the threshold 😂

Yabu
Even if you are being financially abused , £90 a month won’t do much
I’m a single parent and I don’t even get it

Naively I’d rather the money goes to those that need it

@WombatChocolate

I will say it again. This isn’t a policy which has the aim of helping all and particularly treating equally all those in middling incomes.

The aim if the policy is to provide a small additional support through an easy to administer system, that will definitely reach those on low incomes. It does achieve this. Everyone on a low income does qualify for it. Along the way, some other people get it too, but they are not higher rate taxpayer individuals. The government is happy for them to receive it because the administration via personal income is cheap to administer and this is a key criteria for a successful policy.

People forget that data on household income is not held. People forget that if an individual in a household earns £60k it is not a low income. Yes, lots might consider it middling and it’s not to say the family won’t face costs and not be rolling in it….but child benefit is no longer targeted at them. The state can’t afford for it to be universal now.

What irks people is not so much that they dint get it, but that some people they know who have a higher household income do. Given this benefit isn’t determined by household income, but has a threshold for individual income (reason for this explained above) anyone who meets the criteria gets it,and the government is happy about that. Numbers in this category who have household incomes of close to £100k will be small in relation to the overall profile of families receiving it. It would cost far more to launch a new system that calculated household income and awarded it that way.

It’s about the big picture, and not about making a policy which seems fair to those with an earner in over £60k, who feel irked that they know someone on £45k whose getting it when their household isn’t.

And don’t forget it isn’t a cliff edge policy. There is a taper. From £50k up, you do t get the full amount but you don’t lose it all until you’re on £60k.

Of course individuals can use the money for what they want, but it’s chief end isn’t to help middle class families pay for their nursery places etc. Don’t forget that £60k as an income is never within reach for the vast majority of people.

Personally I’d make the free school lunches means tested too. But I know administratively that would be very expensive and it makes sense to give it to all, not for any redistribution if wealth reasons, but simplicity and take-up. Tax and benefits systems have to consider a wide range of things to become ‘effective’ which lots of people seeem us able to consider. Instead, all some can see is that next door, which has 2 working parents who each earn £40k are getting it, but us here, with one higher earner, in £75k aren’t.

But a good tax system must be seen AS FAIR . It used to be fair as families got it. Gov choose to rename and redefine as a benefit not an allowance, then realised that the only way they could easily do this was through a crude tool that leads to gross unfairness. £60k is not a high income to keep a family of 4 or5 on . Agree it is not low and it’s above average, but it doesnt equate to a luxurious lifestyle. Add to that is the fact net take home pay for a single person on £60k is significantly lower overall % of gross pay than that 2 people earning £30k - both form tax and Ni . Only one person will be eligible to have employee contributing to a pension tax free, , the other person will need to save into a pension net of tax of the household income. In my case it can’t a choice to be a 1 person income…my ex suffers from severe and enduring mental illness which he developed 10 years into our marriage. He couldn’t work. No one would hire him if he interviewed as he was cognitively impaired, he couldn’t claim any disability benefits other than PIP- because guess what? Magically they could calculate household income when it came to claiming other benefits and he didn’t qualify because I earnt too much .and he was too afraid to apply to PIP because of the assessment process. We struggled because I had to work bloody long hours to get that wage , and be an effectively single parent and a sole carer. If I had left him during that period the state would have had to step in to support him.
It sure felt like a big bloody kick in the teeth to withdraw the one allowance we got for our youngest ( eldest one had finished school by then), I felt like I was being screwed over for more tax, less allowance, no qualification for benefits in his right because of our household income. I felt I was being screwed over compared with people I knew who had 2 incomes both below the threshold for higher rate tax let alone child benefit

@user1471453601

I cannot understand the logic behind means testing child benefit, but not old age pension. I'm an OAP and get a pretty good occupational pension too.

Where is the logic between these two things?

Apart from the fact that many misguided pensioners vote tory.

@ user1471453601 Really? . so you are ok and sod poorer pensioners, go and do one. I get a pension and a private pension and I work so I am ok as well but have every sympathy for people who don't have my advantages, and believe you me, a lot wont be voting tory again, with the suspension of the triple lock, the changes to pension credit, the NI levy next year, the ignored call for restitution for 50s ladies mean a lot wont, but of course these things wouldn't change your voting habits, they don't affect you do they? but they affect millions

I’m more worried that if you on low wage Universal Credit gives you nothing for a 3rd child unless a multiple birth or a rape. But nobody every on here complaining about that. I mean nobody thinks having 10 plus kids on benefits is a great idea but stopping at 2 isn’t exactly loads. Plus if the children has already been born while you in a good job then through health say you need benefits you will always be unable met your families needs

If health needs forced you to lose your income, you’d be entitled to PIP regardless of how many children you have.
I think it’s a good idea to stop at 2 if you can’t afford to raise them without government help. You don’t need ‘loads’ of kids, more than 2 is a luxury many can’t afford. Kids need food, space, clothes, a warm home to shelter them from the elements, attention, role models, money spent on their education (even in a state school you pay for clubs, trips and extra tuition). They benefit massively from parents being comfortably off and able to provide.

The lack of tax credits for a third child was to deter people from having large families they can’t support themselves.

Plus if the children has already been born while you in a good job then through health say you need benefits you will always be unable met your families needs

This is also why people need to make allowances for these things by having life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection insurance. On the scale of things these are cheap enough to have.

Society shouldn't be paying out benefits to high earners on the off chance of financial abuse.