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??!

Agree it should be based on family income just like other benefits

Child benefit was to encourage people to have children. We need it to be universal now due to our ageing population, we need more children not less.

But that's just a pyramid scheme. What happens when all these children that you say should be encouraged are old themselves? We'll need even more children to support them.

The country and the planet is already over populated and what we certainly don't need is to encourage people to have more than the replacement number of children.

But again there could be one high earner who is a single parent, who has very high childcare costs because there is no other parent to share the childcare. They are already taxed a lot more than a couple with the same or even a higher household income and don't get the extra 15 hours of tax-free childcare while the couple do. The only fair way to calculate tax and thresholds is on a household basis. If the French manage this - and the UK Government can do it when it suits them - then we should be doing it for tax also. Single parents are being massively penalised at every level of earnings.

Yes if your salary sacrifice pension takes you under £60k then you still get some benefit. It’s worth sacrificing more salary down to £50k as your pension is your future income, and taking anything over £50k now you lose 43.25% in tax and NI and your child benefit so effectively over 50% if one child and 60% if 2+

If you were paying to a pension you weren’t losing any CB

It's also worth bearing in mind that if you're not sure how much you'll earn due to bonuses etc, you can claim the CB and pay back what you're not entitled to via a tax return, which if it's just for this purpose, it's a 10 minute job.

It's only if you know you're well above the threshold does it become not worth claiming at all.

Another fab Tory policy by the way.

We do this, one of us earns over £50k and the other less than half this. So we put all CB into a separate account, then if we haven’t managed to get taxable income down to £50k via pension then we pay it back from the account when we do the self assessment. What is then left is my budget for the year for clothes, classes etc. or put into account to pay towards childcare.

Free school meals are also there to help children who are neglected and not fed by parents at home. If those parents got CB they would still not feed them.

And fourth children also eat. In poverty stricken homes... do you think kids after the third shouldn't be helped?

Tbf it used to be universal. You could be earning millions and still get CB. Gradually removing it when earnings went over a certain amount was supposed to make it fairer.

The fact that it's applied in exactly the same way to single parent households kind of does a shit on that though.

Especially as a household who haven't done everything to maximise their income may still be eligible. I'm in one such household actually. We get full child benefit, with me working part time, but we wouldn't get any and would also only have the benefit of one personal allowance if the same wages were coming into a single parent household.

Agree. I don't get cb for my two because my dh earns too much. But they are not his children and we don't share finances I have in paper just under the UK average in salary. His dd gets free school meals, mum gets cb and everything else yet the child's father, is the high earner.

"But there are already ways to calculate total family income. When my children were small (just before the Child Benefit was changed) we used to be eligible for Working Family Tax Credit. We had to complete a form with our total family income. Why couldn't this same form be used?"

Yes, for those in the tax credit/UC system they already assess household income. For those who are not, they only have access to individual income via HMRC.

If they were to decide that anyone claiming CB needed to now be subject to a household income assessment, then all ten million of claimants would have to be moved to the UC system. It would cost more to administer than they would save in removing CB from some households (apparently). There have certainly been reviews over the years that have concluded this.

So you could do it, because people are cross that other families are getting money that they don't need, but it would cost the country more.

It depends how much people want to punish those claiming 'unfairly' because it would - allegedly - not save us any money at all, quite the opposite.

I agree it's not fair. Particularly to single parent families. I've had to work full time to support my children as my ex has never worked since we split up therefore doesn't have to pay any maintenance. I'm now just above the threshold for repaying part of my child benefit and higher tax.

In a couple we could earn almost twice as much as I do, be on a lower tax bracket and claim full child benefit.

this is the latest research briefing to parliament if anyone is interested in the design flaws

Maybe to encourage both parents to work?

Everyone can claim Child Benefit. If you are affected by the tax charge you can claim Child Benefit and opt not to receive the payments.

That way you get the NI credits and your child gets their NI number but you avoid paying the tax. (Obviously if you're not liable to the tax, opt in to the payments).

The NI credits are worth having as they count towards your pension and if you don't need them, you can transfer them to someone else like your parents or PILs, if they help care for your child.

Come on, you're talking about massive salaries here though!! If you're earning that much (50k even on your own) you don't need child benefit. We earn less than £50k combined and we manage fine. Live according to your means.

It's because they have the potential to earn more than the first scenario if both parents work.

I can see why people think this is unfair, but I don’t think the outrage is proportionate to the actual problem.

Its a luxury for a family to be able to have a SAHP and it’s one that comes with many benefits. Having two parents working full time in jobs that earn them almost 50 grand each is going to be incredibly stressful and come with work and childcare expenses that a family with a SAHP simply won’t have.

I prefer universal benefits that everyone is entitled to even if they don’t really need it because I don’t think it’s fair that those who pay the most tax receive the least support from their own government when they need it. This system is rewarding families that choose to both go out to work and who support the economy by paying for childcare and leaving the families that have decided to have a SAHP to get on with it because they can clearly afford it. I don’t think it’s that terrible.

My point was that FSM for all infants isn’t means tested or based on salary , you can have millionaires kids eating free at school , that money could have been better used to provide FSM throughout the holidays to those that genuinely need them . Also if you can’t afford to care for 4 children without the extra x amount of CB maybe you should consider not having anymore .

This is oversimplifying it though.

A single parent on £50k, living in the SE with one child under 4 could easily be spending 2/3 of their take home pay on rent and childcare.

Another example could be someone like my best friend - her parents have helped her and her husband out financially for the last 20 years. They both earn a combined wage of under 50k but live very comfortably.

My DH doesn’t earn anywhere near 50k but we can’t claim as he has a company car (that we pay tax on already) and they take that into account too. I earn much less than DH, I’m also full time so we also have to pay for childcare as well. If I had a company car and DH didn’t, we’d still be able to claim in full.

Having two parents working full time in jobs that earn them almost 50 grand each is going to be incredibly stressful and come with work and childcare expenses that a family with a SAHP simply won’t have.

But again, how do you think it is for the single parent in this situation? They are taxed more, have CB etc taken away at half the household income level, have to pay all childcare costs from the single salary and do everything at home with nobody to help. Almost all such parents are women. Why are all women not angry at this blantant discrimination?