To think the child benefit arrangements are unfair?

[MobLife]

Only just clocked this and I'm still not 100% sure I've got it right because it seems wrong...
So if 2 parents are both earning £49,999 and hence taking in almost £100k household income they can continue to claim full CB

But

2 parents where the household income is way under that (lets say for arguments sake £70k) and one parent is earning the greater proportion (between £50-60k) will either get a much reduced CB amount or potentially nothing at all?

How is that fair??!

It's even more unfair on single parents. They have to provide financially and do all childcare/ pay for it.

A single parent household is charged FAR higher tax than a two parent household with the same household income, which is a disgrace.

A dual parent household can share earning and childcare between them as they wish so have twice the hours per day to spend on these things yet are taxed FAR less! They get:

•Double the tax free amount
•All tax thresholds effectively doubled
•Can earn twice as much before child benefit is withdrawn
•Can earn twice as much before 30hrs childcare/ tax free childcare withdrawn
•Can earn twice as much before tax free allowance withdrawn
•Can save twice as much tax free

Etc.

No surprise that the entire system is so discriminatory against single resident parents when over 90% of them are women. 😒

It's not fair and should be on guardian/ parental household income

Hard to fix for dual parent households without more sophisticated IT. Very easy to fix for the single parent households though: just double all of the thresholds. Very quick and cheap IT update.

If any Government gabe a crap about women or child poverty they'd do this on day one in office.

well I think the gov do it as an incentive to work, they get more tax if both parents work & more people earn 50k then they do 70k.

I don't think it should be means tested though.

Or even about basic fairness actually.

🙄🙄🙄🙄 There's always one who starts with this misery top trumps isn't there?

wasn't the equivalent benefit in the past for everyone?

And how does taxing single parents who already work far more than a two parent household with the same income "incentivise" them?

@Lovelycheesegromit you can still claim it. He will be the one who suffers the tax. I don’t know if that will cause other issues for you with your husband and I’m so sorry to hear you are in that situation, but I just wasn’t sure if you knew that you were still entitled to claim it.

@AdviceNeeded367 I meant that if 1 person is a low earner eg nurse and the other partner earns over the threshold, that the couple as a whole would be given more 'allowance' before loosing the benefits as a recognition of low pay.

I’d change it and make it so you could only claim for the first 3 children.

what difference would this make? Hardly anyone has more that 3 dc

If the higher rate tax band had been uprated properly with inflation it would kick in at almost £100k!!

@SheeplessAndCounting I don't think they care about single parents do you?

Many people do not realise how much fiscal drag has screwed them over (on purpose).

It's not consistent with other things like benefits which take household income into account. However, there are some things were individual assessment works to the benefit of the family not the state - for example student loan. Assuming both have been to university, a household with two people earning £50k will both be paying their student loan. A household with only one income will only pay one off - if they never work, the other partner's would get wiped after however many years it is now.

Nobody is saying that 50k is poverty stricken it’s a matter of unfairness which is why it should be on household total income . I actually think it would have been better to have left it at everyone gets it and cut other things like the FSM for all infants or perhaps capped it at 3 children per family . It is amazing to me that they can take CB away from people they perceive don’t need it but can’t do the same with the heating allowance for pensioners who don’t need it .

No. They very clearly don't.

It would be nice though if other women stood up for us and also demanded this fairness. Women are 51% of the population. 90% of resident single parents are women. All women should be demanding that single parents aren't taxed more than households that are couples, surely, for the sake or women and children.

It was a gimmick brought in to make it look like the government were doing something about the welfare bill.

it also made the decimation of other benefits palatable to the public because it out the 50k earnings into their head, and put the “well I lost my CB so everyone is losing out…”.

It’s an absolute nonsense because it costs more now because of the admin than any potential savings.

And it disproportionately negatively impacts women because of the national insurance credits issue. It was an abusive partners dream ticket.

I think you can stay opted in so child gets NI and parent gets NI payments made you just have to ring up and tell them not to send you any money.
I opted out as am working and pay ni and my DS still got NI number.

Pensioners are more reliable voters…

Fair enough, I was perhaps more thinking of the tax band at which you start to pay tax 😀.

I still claim it and DH has to pay the tax. He moans every time he has to do the self assessment but there is no way I am giving it up. Eleanor Rathbone MP campaigned for family allowance for years and insisted that it be paid to mothers not fathers.

Well, tbh, it's very unfair that the Government (ie taxpayers) just hand out money to people who have children - why are their lifestyle choices subsidised by everyone else? So, considering that parents are handed large amounts of mpney tax-free, then perhaps complaining about "fairness" is rather inappropriate

Many people do not realise how much fiscal drag has screwed them over (on purpose).

aren't income tax bands frozen for 5 years