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!?

@ChristinaXYZ I assumed their income was after income tax

IMO the problem at the moment with CB is that it's neither one thing nor the other. It's not a blanket payment to help support parents as it used to be, but neither is it means tested.

Ideally it would be scrapped entirely and the funding put back into the pool for UC and other benefits provision.

I don’t understand why child benefit is means tested but the winter fuel allowance for the elderly is not.

YANBU OP

Child benefit as a universal benefit was cheap and easy to administer. I’m not even sure it saved as much as they thought.

I think it's massively unfair that 2 households can have same overall income but one can be penalised for having a higher earner, while the other gets the full amount for having 2 lesser earners.

I don't understand why this is the case?

A household of 50k + 20k has the same income as a household of 35k + 35k, so why does the first household have to pay some back just because one earns 50k?? It's the overall income that matters to the child surely.

It's the inconsistency which causes the issues.So, are we taxing on personal income or on household income?

Exactly.

People's problems with the UK child benefit situation is that it's fucking arbitary and unfair/inconsistent.

I have a problem with it on principle - it's just a really shit implementation of a benefit which is designed to get to children.

There's no excuse for not reforming it.

It's supposed to be a universal benefit, I think all households with children should be able to claim it.

.. forgot to add, however, in the UK we have a lot of shitily implemented taxes and benefits.

Council tax? not fit for purpose. it's a total joke. most people find it arbtary and inconsistent.
Child benefit too.
"Bedroom tax" poorly communicated and designed.

Yet instead of reforming it, we continue as is.

it's ridiculous.

these structures simply aren't designed or implemented well.

We as country can’t pay any benefits to a 3rd child even if family have no income at all. If we are that hard up there has to be a cut off. So if that means £20 comes of a £60,000 wage packet it all helps.

FUCKING DISGRACEFUL THAT ITS MEANS TESTED
EVEN FUCKING WORSE THAT ITS NOT PROPERLY MEANS TESTED- one higher earner penalised over two lesser paid but household income more. VILE

But the non working parent could just get a job?

What an ableist comment! No, the non-working parent cannot just get a job. Maybe the mum (usually the non-working parent) is suffering significant health issues or disability from giving birth. Maybe the child has additional needs which would be too much for a carer to cope with so they can’t be put into group childcare. Maybe the working parent works long hours and has no flexibility to do any childcare at all, so the non-working parent is unable to get a job because they have to be available to cover all of the sick days and holidays and everything. Or maybe the non-working parent has poor employment prospects and min wage doesn’t cover the cost of childcare so they’d be worse off by working.

I'm sure that I read somewhere that the administration costs of doing the means testing, and pulling thousands more people into tax self assessment. Who wouldn't have done self assessment because they only have a PAYE job. Was greater or at least equal to, the amount of cb recovered.

I think it's unfair that a family with both parents earning £49000 (total household income £98000) get it but a household with only one income of £60000 don't. It should be based on total household income imo.

I'm a single mum, I earn just under 45k, also get no maintenance. I would miss CB if I went over the threshold. My rent is £750 a month which is standard here for a 2 bed terrace. Mine gets spent on the kids/household as does all the money coming in.

The removal of child benefit from higher income families saved not a penny of taxpayers money and served its ultimate purpose of ensuring that wealthier families had even less investment in the benefit system thus making sure of the ultimate aim - reducing benefits for the poorest.

It was a popular move among lower income families and still is ‘why do people earning £X need it?’ And now means when benefits for lower earning families are cut, middle income and wealthier families don’t care ‘why should they get £X when they chose to have children younger /not work as much as me etc’

Healthy societies where lower income families do well provide benefits for everyone; paid parental leave/ heavily subsidised childcare/ child allowances and the wealthier pay more tax to fund it however they object less because they’re getting a lot back

Societies like ours give benefits only to the poorest, cut them to the bone, give tax breaks to the wealthier and everyone is poorer.

Sadly we live in a society that finds it more palatable to penalise children and mothers than to make feckless fathers pay their child maintenance

High earners don't need benefits. It is perfectly fair.

Presumably it's the target audience and political messaging that makes child benefit (and other benefits like housing benefit-equivalent in the UK and working age benefits in general) different to Winter Fuel in the UK. Winter Fuel goes to pensioners who vote and pensioners are the salt of the earth who worked all their life, got up to go to work before they went to bed along with the other three Yorkshiremen and buy the Daily Mail. Child benefit and in work benefits goes to scroungers, feckless mothers and people who watch the BBC and don't know what a hard day's work is like. Housing benefit-equivalent needs to be capped because it goes to the feckless and no one should be better off out of work than in work. All stereotypes and wrong-headed in their own way. Let's forget Dave and Sam wanted to spend more on refurbishing the kitchen on No 10 than the limit Dave wanted to put on housing. Let's forget the multiples of the limit Boris and Carrie wanted to spend on refurbishing and for which there were some creative fund raising approaches that don't need investigating. Lets forget most benefit-recipients are the hard-working poor. Let's forget sometimes people have more than two children while they work and forget to look in their time machine to understand what might happen in the future. Let's forget the impact of the bedroom tax/whatever excess room supplement the government wanted to cal it on the disabled and others. And lots of other things. It's all about the political optics.

@Ozanj so what...going on that logic a couple who choose to have a baby (regardless of income) shouldn't get any child benefits? Makes complete sense 

But no...you are NOT forced to have your baby in the rep of Ireland anymore and even before that there was contraception!
And as @OchonAgusOchonOh says that's a bit rich considering it's STILL the case in a part of the U.K.

In a longer term political strategy, what will be the effect of disengaging further the wealthy from benefits, GP services and other things? Will it make the establishment engaged and fight to fund them sufficiently like they do state education?

@MissMaple82 and you can speak for all high earners can you! Well thank god for that...from now on when it comes to any matters that affect high earners we will just ask you!

It is not fair.

When my DC were born, there was a huge 'Money to Mummy' campaign to ensure that the child benefit went to the mother.

Now, typically (not all cases by any means, but probably the majority of cases), the father is the higher earner, the father earns more than £50K, the child benefit is due back. But sometimes it is the mother that has to find that money if the father has frittered their £50K+ away.

Once the money has been paid to the mother (or main carer), the money should stay there.

@Aroundtheworldin80moves

The current system is unfair. We have a total household income currently of £57,000 and don't get the full amount, but households can earn £99,999 and get the full amount.

Genuinely high earners don't need it. But its middle income families missing out.

This! The implementation of it was crap and cowardly from the government.

@Isonthecase

I agree that it should be based on household income. I also think the money saved could be far better spent on childcare loans - we do student loans so why can't we offer those to help people (predominantly women) maintain their careers with young kids?

I'm still repaying a tax credit fuckup made 12 years ago. I queried it at the time and they insisted that it was correct, but six years later, a bill for thousands dropped through the letterbox, by which time, my income had significantly changed due to illness. Had they put every bit of childcare fees for eleven years into a debt, rather than the few quid each month's miscalculation, I'd owe tens of thousands, especially with the interest the loans company would charge.

Some of those who think £50k is such a huge family income might feel differently if in another 10 years they’re earning at that level and the threshold still hasn’t moved. More and more people are being brought into higher rate of tax, loss of child benefits etc who were never intended to be penalised. One of these days it might be you and you might not feel so “rich”.