Tax childless adults

[Acidburn]

Hi all

Just saw the below article on LBC news:

www.lbc.co.uk/news/childless-tax-birthrate-uk-cost-of-living-paul-morland/

AIBU to think that this insane?

Maybe they will allow people who are infertile to get an exemption, a bit like they do with those who have a third child following rape.

This whole idea is disgusting.

I had to have 11 rounds of IVF to have DS1, with several losses along the way including one still birth

Understandably, my mental health was absolutely shredded at several points

I think being taxed as a childless selfish non-member of society would have pushed me over the edge
Not to mention seriously compromised my ability to pay for my IVF…

Exactly, if anything we want to discourage birth rates long term (and that’s what’s predicted) because the forecasts are that we don’t have the environment to support this many people at this level of resource consumption. That’s also the reason a childless tax is highly unlikely.

You’ll get short termist politicians trying to prop it up with less overt taxes and policies but if they were after a quick solution to the population burden they’d be looking at reducing the bulge before they hit retirement not the bottom.

I agree with this but hope we do not get short term politics around this, especially anything as suggested in op

But what do you mean by reducing the bulge? Are we taking people out ;

Exactly, if anything we want to discourage birth rates long term (and that’s what’s predicted) because the forecasts are that we don’t have the environment to support this many people at this level of resource consumption.

Ideally they want a slower slump down - so decreasing but at slower rate bit TBH Europe will probably get by with immigration even with the associated problems it will just take time to get that widely accepted.

You know what would encourage women to have more children:

A working CMS system which means men can't essentially stop paying for their children
Cheaper and more secure housing
Better childcare provision
Better paternity leave
Flexible jobs that encourage parents of both sexes to have the flexibility to do school drop offs and pick ups etc
Less zero hours jobs with all the instability they bring
No gender pay gap

Do you know what wont encourage women to have children:

Taxing them from 18 or whenever so they have even less chance of getting secure housing, even less chance of saving to adequately support themselves during their maternity leave
Making it easier for men to be more financially secure by having children (by avoiding tax) whilst still not making it harder for them to escape paying for those children

Also chillingly
Given how low the rape conviction rate is
And how some rapists are successfully managing to get access to children granted that are a result of the rape

Any tax that incentivises having children could easily lead to an increase in rape against women of child bearing age

I would be ok with this if those that had children were then taxed when the child leaves home.

Its simple three kids.
When the first leaves home your tax goes up.
same with the second
and then with the third.

Its only fair because you are no longer supporting your children and should be putting more money into society because you no longer have children to pay for.

Let the flaming commence :)

As if a telegram from the Queen is going to motivate me to have children 😆😆😆

Also here men especially don’t always want commitment.

As someone posted earlier about Israel, in some countries there is generally more value added to the idea of having a family.

See this is closer to what I proposed. So instead of people without children getting taxed more than people with children, give those with children a lower tax burden from when they have children until the children are a certain age.

But personally I think 18 is too late. If the exception is to cover the horrific cost of childcare then surely it is only needed until childcare is no longer needed e.g. school holiday, warp around care etc.

We're about to enter a time when AI and robotics will replace huge numbers of jobs across all kinds of areas. That means a lot of people without work. We need to start making care jobs far more lucrative and attractive.

Just to remind you one’s grandchildren have all the privileges possible to make child bearing and raising easy could you be a good subject and do the same and have more 😀

I'm assuming care work will go one of two ways

More people go into it because of a lack of other jobs due to ai and robotics

Or we get care robots who look after us

Maybe a mix of both

Just to add, even if lots of couples started having lots of babies now, it would be 19 years before the first of them would enter the workforce.

I think the reason why my SIL is pregnant and I am not has less to do with our individual financial situations. Its because Israel is a much more tribal society and they celebrate families and children. The UK is much more individualistic and this influences our decisions.

Israel is the most pronatalist country on earth. Women are under enormous pressure to have children. Those who don’t are nothing. The book Regretting Motherhood by Orna Donath features mainlyIsrarli women and is an eye opening read.

We don't need to have children

All of our demands for a workforce can be met by immigration

It's a lovely (selfish) act to have children but we don't NEED them apart from our individual emotional urges

Oh I don’t think there’ll be any ‘quietening’ or anything, but if I was given to conspiracy I’d guess the state of the NHS doesn’t come without a silver lining.

I suspect there’ll be a lot of conversations initiated about quality vs quantity when it comes to longevity along with the widely expected rises in retirement ages shortening the length of time someone is economically inactive at the end of their lives (tbf there was an extraordinary length of time between rises in pension ages whilst life expectancy was rising).

I’m not against euthanasia with a hell of a lot of conditions attached and I suspect that it’ll become a regular point of debate in coming decades. Most people want to reach old age but it’s almost always accompanied with an unspoken caveat of decent health which sadly isn’t the case for lots of people.

We will get care robots helping with some things. So a robot could easily have compartments for medication and have an alarm when a compartment opens for someone to take their next medication. As long as someone can physically pick up and swallow the medication, and has the cognitive ability to understand they need to do this, there is no reason why this has to be done by a human.

But some things like changing an incontinent adult would probably require a very sophisticated robot that would just be too expensive. I think the aim will be to reduce the number of care visits by a human to people living at home through AI.

That would be a great way to treat a couple who are having trouble conceiving. Just add insult to misery. Wonderful idea. Really well thought out.

This kind of already happens with child benefit/childcare element of UC it’s just distributed differently to what’s being proposed in the link.

Really uncomfortable with some of the comments on here that seem to suggest it would be more unfair to do this to people who can’t but have tried to have children. As if somehow just having this for people making a conscious choice is ok. Once again pedalling the narrative that people who choose not to have children are somehow worth less in society. It’s a shitty idea for everyone that would be affected.

'There is no reason this has to be done by a human' apart from the fact that lack of human contact is soul-destroyingly lonely. Modern 'care' is already awful. Remove the humans it gets even worse.

'There is no reason this has to be done by a human' apart from the fact that lack of human contact is soul-destroyingly lonely.

True. It was bad enough for the pandemic. We saw the devastating effect on people isolating in care homes or shut in cells 23 hours a day. Inhumane at the time so we’d need more than robots.

I'm pretty sure that Ceausescu did something similar in the 1970s.

A natalist policy isn't a desirable policy. (massive understatement there)

I don't think it would be OK for anyone, I disagree with that stupid marriage tax allowance, I would disagree with this because I am a liberal.

It is also obviously stupid because either it will be tokenistic, in which case it will have no impact, or it will be financially meaningful, in which case you will encourage unsuitable people to have children which will cost a fortune to resolve when they end up injured/in care/badly educated.

I am old enough to remember when having a baby to get a council house* was a bad thing. Now having a baby to get a tax break is a good thing?

*I don't subscribe to this myth, btw.