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!

They also need to stop this fiscal drag nonsense. They must think we are all so stupid if they think we don't realise that freezing thresholds costs us way more than adding a couple of % to the headline rate, it's insulting how dumb they believe we all are. If it had kept up with inflation higher rate tax would start at around £90k. It needs to be put into law that thresholds are automatically uprated by inflation every year by default unless a specific additional law is passed to negate this, which would ensure a proper debate by our elected representatives (such as they are) was had about it and at least the way people were being ripped off had to be publicly declared each time they decided to make it worse.

I thought I was reasonably well up on this stuff, but the bit about expense refunds being considered income for UC purposes is new to me. And one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. If we weren't so desperately short of carers it'd be funny.

It's a good point about freezing thresholds. Cowardice, really. Because inflation was quite low for a long time, it didn't matter much, but now all of a sudden a lot of people, perhaps a critical mass, are feeling the impact. Some of them will tailor their decision making process accordingly.

I view this differently. My DP earns over £50k. We claim the CB and pay it into my pension to make up for me working PT and we then pay the CB back in his tax return (not all of it as he's under £60k and pays pension contributions)

Producing children does actually help the country though and is very much needed at the mo as we face a declining birth rate! Look at what's happening to China, a declining birth rate, aging population and a massive problem..

I believe in child benefit but it does nothing to raise birthrates.

No, although I think there was some indication the child tax credit system might have had an impact, a while back?

You can’t raise a child with £20/week. That barely pays for nappies and wipes

@EasterIssland
Hmm no but as a single parent it does help.

And if there was more support like that (especially for single parents) then I believe it would help the birth rate.

Also to say 'the country owes you nothing for deciding to have a baby', as if you're purely doing it for the fun of it and having children has no benefit for the country is a bit of a piss take

I don't think child benefit raises birth rates, but the withdrawal of it incentivises some people to lower their work rate.

I view this differently. My DP earns over £50k. We claim the CB and pay it into my pension to make up for me working PT and we then pay the CB back in his tax return (not all of it as he's under £60k and pays pension contributions)

You could make those exact same pension contributions into your pension from his salary whether CB was withdrawn or not so I don't really understand why this is relevant?

Also there's absolutely no point in doing that. You're just making extra work for yourselves. Just tick the box to say you don't want it paid to you and then make the pension contributions for you from his salary, then you won't have to claim it and file a tax return and pay it back again, that's completely pointless.

I thought I was reasonably well up on this stuff, but the bit about expense refunds being considered income for UC purposes is new to me. And one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. If we weren't so desperately short of carers it'd be funny.

It's a good point about freezing thresholds. Cowardice, really. Because inflation was quite low for a long time, it didn't matter much, but now all of a sudden a lot of people, perhaps a critical mass, are feeling the impact. Some of them will tailor their decision making process accordingly.

Agreed on both counts @BashirWithTheGoodBeard , complete madness. And yet they stand there wringinf their hands saying "why is our productivity so low, why aren't people working more?". Fix the tax system and so many of the issues would go away. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Not on its own no, but doing things like making it financially easier to have children in general does. And the government benefits from people having children (as previously said we are facing an aging population!)

It really does not. Government support improves the life of children, but it makes no real difference to whether they are born or not.

Sorry with this I had misread and missed the part where you said he is earning under £60k so you don't pay it all back. I thought you had said he was earning £60k.

Well either way considering we are helping them out by producing more people I think they should help us with the financial burden.

Yes, if he was earning £60k I wouldn't bother. He probably will be next tax year (and I'll be FT then) at which point it will be a waste of time. The point I was trying to make (although appreciate not so clearly) is that I find it bizarre the amount of people on here saying they don't claim because their oh's earn over £50k. A tax return takes 20ish mins so unless the OH is earning £60K and not making pension contributions it is still worth claiming because you'll receive something. I think one year we repaid all but £400 but £400 for 20 min form filling is worth it for me.

Yes definitely worth it if you don't have to pay it all back, of course.

Just such a stupid system and massive waste of money because effectively - given that administering the means testing costs more than paying it universally - what they have done is taken money from children and spent it on admin staff instead.

@messybutfun
"A civilised society is one that invests in its people, especially its children. You can see where not investing in skills and charging youngsters to learn a job like nursing has got us.

We now need to import these skills at a rate of half a million a year without getting anywhere near sufficient levels. Child benefit doesn‘t even scratch the surface. It will take a whole lot more spending than £20 a week on a child to rectify the neglect and managed decline of the last 13 years."

The majority of the "skills" we have to import every year are workers in tertiary industries; jobs which domestic workers don't want to do. How do you suggest we "invest" in our young people and encourage them to do the jobs they consider too shit to bother with?

It would be fabulous to give all young people a "free" university education, but won't that just compound the problem of them not wanting to do jobs which are beneath them? Do you think we should just keep importing people from poorer countries to do the jobs we're above doing? Do you really not see a problem with this? Perhaps you'd prefer all young people to get a university education, and then for all jobs to be degree entry?

@usernamealreadytaken Specifically, I was talking about nurses. Pay them to study. It‘s a nonsense that we have 150,000 vacancies yet we are not training enough. And about 30% of those that start training drop out. Why is that? It needs addressing now.

Secondly, we have a recently opened training facility for new doctors which has placements only for overseas students. Not a single place has been funded for domestic students. All the while we are short of doctors.

This is just the tip of the iceberg - it goes for pretty much any industry with a skill shortage. It’s really not about jobs the British don‘t want to do - the British need to be skilled up to do them. And they can‘t be expected to pay for it.

But if you start paying people to study medicine / nursing where do you stop? Do people only get paid to study for 'worthy' careers?

What about the arts, could people get paid to study those too?

Don't be ridiculous. The country needs medical staff and there's currently a huge shortage and for many, pay is relatively low for a graduate profession. Something has to change.

No-one's going to die if we don't have enough people studying the arts. It's a nice to have after we've satisfactorily provided a decent basic standard of living for the country's citizens.

It's not like paying bursaries to people so they can study for healthcare roles, more than they'd get for doing eg English is some new untested thing we've never tried either.

Seems fair enough to me. If you train to be a maths teacher, you get the fees covered, because the country is short of maths teachers. Wouldn't bother me in the least if they introduced similar incentives for nursing. Where do you stop? With the jobs that aren't short of trained applicants, of course.

I take it that you're a supporter of printing more money to satisfy the nurses 20% salary increase demands?