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?

Well that kind of amounts to the same thing, in that in order to subsidise childcare and provide other financial benefits to people who have children, you would either need to raise taxes or divert existing tax revenue away from other things and into families with children.

But it would be a less blatant way of doing it.

It’s going to happen in under some guise or another, although probably not as overtly as taxing people without children.

The simple fact is our population (despite what some sectors of the media would have you believe) is shrinking at the youngest ages but lasting longer at the older ages. There’s a significant bulge in the Middle Ages meaning that we won’t have the economically active population to be able to support the very youngest and the very oldest at the same levels we’re used to currently.

It looks like it might level out in a couple of generations but we haven’t got the ‘advantage’ of baby boomers who lost a lot of a generation to world wars.

@Traveller3367

Surely the answer to that is immigration. We're going to have huge numbers of people being displaced due to climate change, water shortages etc in the decades ahead. We're really not going to be short of young people wanting to enter the country any time soon.

The usual suspects will whinge about their culture being eroded etc etc but if we're not producing our own offspring then so it goes. We're going to have way bigger problems than that to worry about in the years ahead anyway.

*an older generation was lost to world wars.

When you start to think The Handmaid's Tale isn't that farfetched after all...

This country just doesn't make having children an attractive proposition, unless you have a strong biological desire.

This is a good book on the topic, albeit American
www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00KK6CBCY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

This.
This is a huge slap in the face to those of us who are not childless by choice.

Ludicrous idea.

Does he really think that paying less tax is going to be the lure that makes people rush out and reproduce?

What about those that have no one to reproduce with or those that can't, they're all going to be penalised for their lack of social commitment.

Not every child is a wanted, loved child but you keep popping out those unwanted children because you'll be paying less tax.

Anyone who can seriously write: 'on the birth of the third child, they would receive a telegram from the Queen' is not worthy of having anything they write taken seriously.

Introduce a universal basic income so people don't HAVE to work to survive and we will see more people choosing to raise children.

But that will never happen because people cannot STAND to think that someone else is getting something for nothing.

It will be a cold day in hell before I'll pay a tax for the fact I cannot (and from a genetic pov, should not) have kids!

The thing is if the government introduced a scheme whereby parents had their tax burden reduced for say the first 10 years of their children's life, in order to offset the cost of childcare I wouldn't have an issue with that

But personally I think immigration is the answer. And I don't think we should have a choice over it. Richer countries have contributed more to climate change than third world countries yet it is now more of the third world countries that are suffering the impact of it. I don't just think we could take more immigrants, I think we should have to.

I thought automation was going to replace a lot of jobs anyways. So perhaps desperately trying to increase the worker ant population whilst also decreasing the number of jobs (and hence the ability to tax them isn’t the best idea).

Madness! I have two friends one is childless by choice one would love to have a child & has already paid for IVF.

My choice (wasn’t necessarily easy) was to have two children. I need to house, clothe and feed them!
My choice to pay for two lots of child care, swimming lessons and now one in uni as she doesn’t receive the full maintenance loan I need to also help her.

Just looking at the above even having 2 is a massive long term commitment! A 3rd would have meant probably husband and I reduce our pension payments as for the first I didn’t pay in until she was at school as I couldn’t afford it.

Taxing everything and anything isn’t the answer - spending & supporting in the right way would be a better way!

I wonder how they would treat lesbian couples e.g. does everyone who hasn't had a child have to pay more e.g. in a lesbian couple the woman who hasn't birthed the child has to pay more. Which would be discrimination compared to heterosexual couples.

Would you have to do DNA tests to prove you actually fathered a child, or is being on a birth certificate sufficient.

If they decide just being in a couple is sufficient what about a polygamous relationship? How about we bring in a fertile woman to have a baby for me and my husband so we don't get taxed. We could call her OfthreepeoniesDHsname...

This! In bucket loads!!

And presumably their partners because men can want children as well and not be able to have them and men also have a right to choose.

You can increase immigration to increase the number of young people.

Young people will one day be old people.

I can imagine the mess of financial advisors having to advise people it would be cheaper to divorce and marry someone fertile

Which is precisely why enforcing laws that encourage higher birth rates is a Ponzi scheme

Immigrants from the older nations in the EU use to come here for a few years, work and/or study then go home before they started costing lots.

In fact I know people from newer EU countries who have come back to their home country. Though Covid helped a lot.

I remember this coming up when I was at school. Very Joyce Grenfell jolly hockeysticks headmistress said she didn't look at it like that. She had no children but she had benefitted from her mother's maternity care, school, can't remember about nursery, so she viewed it as paying it back rather than her subsidising people who had children.

That'll be the case whether they move here or are born here.

To quote @Threepeonies above, "Which is precisely why enforcing laws that encourage higher birth rates is a Ponzi scheme."

I don’t see why not but as pp said they too will grow old and need various things

Overall I’m with the pp who pointed out the madness of continually getting bigger growth for younger population as some kind of Ponzi scheme

While I appreciate and support many of the arguments against the idea of a tax on childlessness which have been put forward, what I was basically saying was that, for someone like me, it would add insult to injury!

While I'll apologise for my "fucking snide" expression, you don't necessarily know what people's personal circumstances are while they are discussing and debating. I'm "someone like you" - was never able to have children. I gradually came to terms with it and now given the state of the country and those governing it, I am glad.

People are not having children or having fewer children because of housing, cost of living and extortionate child care. I'm not sure why it is such a surprise that over 65s now outnumber under 16s. Why can't this government and so called experts see the obvious?

I recall when I had my first child in the mid 2010s that my manager was shocked that we didn't get tax credits, despite both me and partner working in fairly low paid jobs full time. He didn't get that if I went part time i probably would still get nothing or barely enough to make it worth applying. In the early 00's when he had his children he got a lot of support with tax credits with both him and his wife being in professional roles. How times have changed.

I think young people see the bone numbing knackering slog of bringing up kids while working full time, not even having a stable home to house their kids in and still being broke despite this. They are deciding that that kind of life is not worth it. Not surprising at all.

Will anything get done about this ticking time bomb and pensions? Will it fuck! The gen Xers are about to get royally shafted now too to pay for this imbalance.

I don't agree with this article though, but then it's a nonsense bullshit article to get people fighting amongst each other so we don't look at the increasing protests, a cost of living crisis and a self serving, corrupt government (and useless BoE) that would make a labotomised slug look competent.

Most people I know who don't have children, have chosen not to have them because they can't afford them.