To be pissed off about paying back child benefit

[pinotnow]

I am in a sector that was awarded a pay rise this year - though our union is fighting for a higher one. The rise was from September but our school (yes, it's teaching) didn't pay it until November when we got months at once. HR always send us a pay statement at this time of year and I have just opened mine and seen I am now on approx £52k (been teaching 18 years and am head of a core subject in a large secondary school). I understand I now have to pay back some of my child benefit. This is a pisser as things are pretty tight and I'm a lone parent who gets no CM (ex is a total waste of space - I've gone through CMS). Also, I wasn't expecting it this year (I was on £49k last year and now I'm worried I've missed some sort of deadline for paying it back as technically I've been on this for 5-6 months, but only just realised.

I really haven't got the head space for this now and a quick Google has just brought confusion. As soon as you move forwards a bit in this shithole country you move backwards it seems. Any advice would be great!

I think you've described it quite well. The 'rich' just aren't that rich any more!

You can increase your pension contributions to remain below the threshold.

@saleorbouy not everyone can

How not?

open a SIPP, pay in money to bring you below the threshold, take that money off when declaring income for child benefit.

anyone can do it.

....and here's another one. I'm flabbergasted at the tax avoidance suggestions that have emerged in this thread. Do anything you can to squeeze 'benefits' out of the public purse when 50k is not enough. Things need to change and will.

Yes, the government will definitely want to remove a strong incentive for people to pay into their pensions. With this demographic pyramid. Not like that's one of the reasons the system was designed as it is or anything.

Can you imagine if the government was that stupid that removed the incentive and everyone was like fine we will all just use the state pension.... or piss off the working population so much that they work less (given they are the ones supporting tthe current people claiming pensions)
Wouldn't that be a dumb move ... even for the Tory's.

Tax avoidance is perfectly legal
Putting money into your pension to bring your income down to allow you to claim CB is perfectly legal

@Zax Tax relief on pensions is not avoidance. It is an incentive for people to look after themselves in retirement. You do understand that, no?

The government has already put limits in place on how much you can contribute and for very high earners the limit is £4K.

They have already had to increase the threshold as doctors were refusing to do extra shifts - they do not have a choice how much they „pay into“ the NHS pension - it is a defined benefit with set percentages of contributions.

Tax avoidance is arranging your personal affairs to benefit from the tax laws
Tax evasion is not paying tax that is due
Tax avoidance is legal
Tax evasion is not

Zax

of course there should be incentives for people to take responsibility for their pensions. Otherwise everyone is trying to claim pension credit. Who do you think will pay for all this?

there has to be some benefits to working and providing for yourself. It doesn’t make any sense to resent society’s net contributors

You're all missing the salient point. There have been all sorts of 'creative' suggestions of how one should effectively reduce one's income in order to receive a state benefit. May be legal but it's immoral and a drain on society.

I am struggling with this as it used to be the case (possibly still is) that if it looked like you’d reduced your savings on purpose to entitle yourself to pension credit, your claim would be denied. I assume the same would be true for any means tested benefit, actually.

How is reducing your income (in whatever way) in order to receive CB different?

(I’m not agreeing with @Zax or their campaign - just trying to understand the logic behind this.)

I'm completely uninterested in your moral take, my only interest was in pointing out that the reduction through pension contributions isn't going to change because it's a nudge towards the behaviour that the government want people to engage in.

Yep! You are penalised for being successful .. standard ! 🙄

How is your talk with the government going ?

Well, truly I'm not bothered whether you're interested in my views and ethics, you will not silence me. If you think that the government wishes to encourage deceptive methods of obtaining benefits when your salary is £50k+ then you're living in a parallel universe.

Would like to know whether zax is thinking about letting the government know that they should stop paying tax to those parents that only work 15h so they can get more cash or is it only those parents that earn 50-60k that she’s worried about.

Because savings and ongoing earnings are two very different things and a system treating the two the same way would be unworkable.

A person's savings already exist and, unless they're in cash under the bed or whatever, are quite simple to document. Whereas your wages for next month don't exist yet and you have to actively do something to get them. There are many more ways why people's income might be vary: overtime, self employment, illness, bonuses, having to move job for a lesser paid one because the bus you got to the old job has stopped running, seasonal work, needing to drop a shift a week for a bit while you look after your mum following her operation. Imagine trying to come up with a set of rules as to when this was ok and when it wasn't, then enforcing it.

Additionally, as discussed already, there's the fact that the government want and need people to save more for their retirement. They're not going to be unhappy about people paying more into their pensions to keep child benefit, particularly not when the alternative in at least some cases would be the person working less or not taking a promotion.

They clearly are when they’re the ones that have set up the rules that allow it.

@Zax May be legal but it's immoral

Interesting your calling others immoral from someone that calls people who have kids "breeders".

You realise since you were once a kid, your parents were "breeders" 😏

The more you talk the more I feel sorry for the person on the receiving end of your letter. Poor person will want to scratch their eyes out from the hypocritical bullshit that comes from your mouth.

A touch of sarcasm I sense, but I'll rise above that and answer the question honestly nevertheless; I have an appointment with my MP next week who is very interested in talking to me and taking it to Westminster.

Oh, I've just realised you were the wind up merchant/crackhead I warned people about earlier in the thread. Mea culpa, but we might as well have some fun since you're still here. Have you managed to get hold of Rishi yet?

I don't often feel sorry for Tory mps - but my god if there's even a slight chance this poster has a meeting with one of them.

I hope they don't die of boredom