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!

A promotion doesn't always mean more childcare costs? In the OP they were just getting a payrise, not working more hours

Try reading the post I responded to.

Huh?

'Some people take a promotion without all these additional costs, if they are at the same office, same hours.'

'Ah yes of course they do. The ones who don't have to pay additional childcare costs because there is a SAHP taking care of "all of that". I.e. 98% men. Ok then.'

The post you responded to was talking about cases where a promotion didn't mean more hours or different office, that's why they are not paying additional childcare, not because there's a SAHP..

And it's wrong.

Its factually not wrong FFS. The OP is not talking about anything else, just CB. Financially you will not be worse off factoring in only CB. It's not an opinion. If you take into account other factors then you may be worse off.

At my organisation most people would be better off with their promotions as only the pay/responsibilities change. Its a professional career so everyone already studying towards qualification already so literally will just be paid more. For me I had some specific work base changes more local to me so I would have to change base hence additional costs to me if I took the next promotion. Loss of child benefit doesn't make me worse off.

Both you and the poster you quote here have engaged in discussion of other factors and examples, making it quite clear that you were talking about the wider population as well as the OP. This insistence that you only mean OP has only come after it's been pointed out that several of the points you've both made (people on NMW, your value judgement on what people 'should' do and on whether it's plausible that they'd think differently to you etc) are irrelevant.

And you actually do yourself down with the insistence that assessing whether a person would be better off purely based on CB withdrawal and no other factor could possibly be relevant, because it's such an obviously silly way to assess the issue. As if anyone is going to say well, I'll still get more in my wage packet and reduced CB in combination so the extra childcare costs are entirely irrelevant to my assessment of whether going for the pay rise/doing the extra shift is worth it.

Second paragraph- fine, but the fact that some people would be better off only furthers the point that circumstances vary far too much for the generalisations made to be correct.

I just feel like you are going purposely awkward. Yes I have said there might be lots of factors involved, but then again there may not be. I have given examples that I believe to be relevant in different circumstances. I don't understand your problem to be honest.

Why do you need extra childcare for a payrise on the face of it. OP has not mentioned that so it's relevant about looking at just the CB. I also commented that I wouldn't take a promotion as I would have to go into the office so it would cost me more. They are 2 different scenarios so not sure why you keep linking them.

Working extra shifts is something totally different also

Surely though if you’re offered a promotion with different working conditions, hours etc then you consider that based on any extra childcare/work life balance, commute etc and decide whether it’s worth it.

£130 child benefit wouldn’t be a dealbreaker or even a consideration.

if you turn down a payrise soley because you’ll lose child benefit as pp’s have suggested then that’s very strange.

Erm, it's never great when people think someone disagreeing with them is awkwardness!

You're obviously not just talking about the OP, and neither is the poster I quoted, because you both referred to circumstances that are different to hers. She's already had her promotion, it's happened, and she hasn't mentioned refusing it or not going for it. But both you and the poster we're responding to here did. And that's fine, the discussion had clearly progressed to the way people in different circumstances might respond to the possibility of CB withdrawal. But let's not pretend that's not what we were doing.

In terms of extra childcare: this will depend, which has always been my point. Some promotions require extra hours. In this respect, they're actually the same as working more hours. The problem is that some of you seem to have substituted your own value judgements, which you can't really do if you're also arguing that there's lots of differences in circumstances.

Ultimately, the problem is with generalisation.

But essentially you aren't actually disagreeing, I feel like you are generalising more than me, i have said that situations vary and you have made similar points to me, but are also insisting that the stepped loss of CB makes you worse off if you earn more, which frankly isn't true in all cases. That is what i am referring to.

I have nothing more to add, this is getting a bit silly and childish TBH. I value everyone's opinions but this is getting a but yes it is, no it isn't over and over again. I am always up for a debate but nothing new is being discussed.

I'm really not. I'm saying we clearly aren't talking solely about the CB when discussing if we're financially better off, that it would be stupid and pointless to do so. And that the tapered loss of CB means even with no extra financial costs of working, a person's effective marginal rate will be higher than it is below the threshold, which is liable to be the point at which some people decide it's not worth extra effort.

@messybutfun no, you weren't specifically referring to nurses; you mentioned that we "now need to import these skills at a rate of half a million a year without getting anywhere near sufficient levels." There are only around 700,000 clinical staff within the NHS in E&W, excl Primary Care. You are confusing migrant workers with NHS staff; the half a million migrant workers coming here each year are, in the majority, employed in lower paid/lower regarded sectors and jobs such as retail, hospitality or transport and manufacturing.

Which new medical training facility are you referring to? It's the BMA which restricts the number of training places available to UK students, partly because students need qualified mentors and if the qualified doctors spent all their time mentoring lots of new doctors, there'd be nobody to actually do the doctoring.

It's absolutely about jobs that British people don't want to do; we spend an absolute fortune on importing low paid workers and topping their wages up with benefits which then leave the country. It's a house of cards, enabled by FoM, and it's going to fall. We've created whole industries of low paid jobs just to be able to import people to do them. Madness.

It‘s the Three Counties Medical School at University if Worcester.

Places are funded by the Department of Health and Social Care - or not in this case.

This country has been importing skills in health care, IT, accounting, engineering - really anything that needs a qualification - for years - it‘s not just low skilled jobs that the British don‘t want/can‘t do.

It's the BMA which restricts the number of training places available to UK students

No it isn't! I do wish people would stop repeating this nonsense.

Has this been overturned then? www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a748

The majority of migrant workers are in lower skilled and paid jobs. We do have skilled migration, as every other country does, but we bring in far, far more lower skilled workers which has been proven to not only suppress wages for the lower paid, but also leads to resentment for so many reasons; lack of infrastructure to support significant migration, lack of social integration, perception of migrants getting things paid for which drains already stretched funding.

There will be UK students as alternative funding has been secured, partly from a charity and partly from the NHS - where do you think NHS money comes from...?

Has this been overturned then? www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a748

It's utterly irrelevant. The BMA doesn't control the numbers of medical students. You may also notice that the motion (passed 15 years ago) "agreed on a complete ban on opening new medical schools". By my reckoning, at least six new medical schools have opened since then, not counting private ones, joint ventures between existing ones, offshoots of existing ones, and the international-only ones. And medical student numbers did increase significantly in 2017.

@usernamealreadytaken The BMA is a trade union. You don't know what you're talking about.

The GMC regulate doctors and medical schools.

The majority of migrant workers are in lower skilled and paid jobs. We do have skilled migration, as every other country does, but we bring in far, far more lower skilled workers which has been proven to not only suppress wages for the lower paid, but also leads to resentment for so many reasons; lack of infrastructure to support significant migration, lack of social integration, perception of migrants getting things paid for which drains already stretched funding.

This was not the case with the EU migrants who came here when we had free movement. Multiple studies showed that they were on average more educated and skilled than the average UK worker, paid more in taxes and used less in services than the average UK worker. Plus the majority tended to then move back to their home countries before retirement therefore less of a burden to the state. They were net contributors and we should have been extremely grateful to them. But in their infinite wisdom the UK public decided this was a bad thing and we should make the UK a very unattrractive place to come and work.

I didn't vote Brexit, but I do have a question in my mind on this topic that goes something like 'Why are taking skilled people from other countries, rather than training people here?' and 'Why don't British people want to do jobs like midwifery that should be a very fulfilling and well-respected occupation?'

Haven't we got rather off topic?

If the UK is suddenly an unattractive place to work, why do we have more migrant workers living and working here than ever? Why do you think it's a good thing that so many people come here when we just don't have the infrastructure to cope with the huge influx we have seen in recent years? Where would you like to build 500,000 houses every year to accommodate those coming here?

EU migrants may well have been more highly skilled, but they were not working in jobs which corresponded with those skills or qualifications.

"Around half of highly educated workers born in new EU member states were in low and medium-low skilled jobs in 2020
Compared to the UK born, migrants are more likely to work in jobs for which they are overqualified, especially if they have foreign qualifications (Chiswick and Miller, 2008). In general, workers are considered overqualified for their jobs if their educational level is above that required for their jobs.
Some of the factors explaining migrants’ high over-qualification rates include the lack of UK-specific skills, employers’ mistrust of or unfamiliarity with foreign qualifications, or migrants’ lack of information about the job searching process in the UK.
The indicator of over-qualification used here shows the share of highly educated workers (those with university degrees or with higher education qualifications below degree level, such as nursing) in low and medium-low skilled jobs (Figure 11). In 2020, the share of over-qualified workers was higher among people born in EU-8 countries (47%), Romania and Bulgaria (41%) and in Pakistan and other South Asian countries (35%), than among the UK born (22%) or the EU-14 born (16%) (Figure 11). Importantly, the migrant groups with the lowest earnings (see Figure 10) were also the ones most likely to be over-qualified for their jobs."

public.tableau.com/views/Labourmarketbriefing2021/FIG10?:language=en-GB&:embed=y&:embed_code_version=3&:loadOrderID=9&:display_count=y&publish=yes&:origin=viz_share_link

public.tableau.com/views/Labourmarketbriefing2021/FIG11?:language=en-GB&:embed=y&:embed_code_version=3&:loadOrderID=10&:display_count=y&publish=yes&:origin=viz_share_link

I completely agree with your questioning why we import skills rather than training our own, and it's in part because successive governments of all colours have found it cheaper to import rather than properly train.

I'd add to your observation my own; why are we creating so many low paid/low skill jobs with wages topped up by taxpayers which seemingly can only be filled by importing migrants willing to do low paid/low skill jobs with wages topped up by taxpayers? Why are businesses allowed to operate on the basis that their staff have to claim benefits to be able to live? Make it illegal to pay lower than the amount needed to live on; if your business cannot do that because people won't pay your prices, then you don't have a business, you have a scam benefits claim.

I didn't vote Brexit, but I do have a question in my mind on this topic that goes something like 'Why are taking skilled people from other countries, rather than training people here?' and 'Why don't British people want to do jobs like midwifery that should be a very fulfilling and well-respected occupation?'

So what is the complaint? First it was that most migrants are not skilled enough but now apparently it is that we shouldn't have been taking the skilled one?

It benefits everyone to have people with different skills and backgrounds moving around. Avoids groupthink. Helps economies, fills specific skills gaps at any given time that occur due to a wide range of reasons: structural changes or demographic changes or sector-specific changes happening at different paces at different times in different countries, etc. Worth noting also that there were a higher number of British people migrating for work to other countries than from any other country in the EU, before Brexit. So the hypocrisy of such arguments is staggering and ill-informed.

Haven't we got rather off topic?

I simply responded to the content of your previous post.

@usernamealreadytaken and your problem with having overqualified people is what exactly? Again surely we should have been grateful for that!! Even if working below their skill level they managed to be on average net contributors to the economy, which the average British person is not.