Should families get a tax allowance for dependant children

[Clariee45]

Just a thought from another thread about there being no help for the squeezed middle who feel they are hardly better off than those on universal credit. Wouldn’t it just be fairer if those families not entitled to universal credit were given an extra tax allowance equivalent to the adult personal allowance for each child.
Why are adults given a tax allowance that acknowledges the basic costs of needing to eat and have a roof over there head etc and yet parents are expected to provide all this (plus 80% childcare costs) for their children completely out of their taxed income

I appreciate that this is true but day by day and week by week when you are pennies over the cut off and scraping together enough to pay bills and childcare it feels really unfair. My friends who earn a smudge less are getting up to 85% off childcare and other support.

This isn't benefit bashing they work hard too!! Not bashing at all and I know there has to be a line drawn somewhere but I think it should have moved in the last 5 years to better reflect reality. We only just fall over it and we're comfortable pre Covid. We are now very very worried and frugal

@Uggtrending Child Benefit isn't capped at 2 children. Only Child Tax Credits/UC is.

So you want those of us who do not have children to pay more tax than those with children?

You already get:

Child benefit - OK I know not everyone does.
Some Childcare
Your children's education
In some places your children get free travel
Free school meals for the first three years in school
In Scotland you get a 'baby box'

I'm happy that my taxes support families with these things, it benefits society so it will benefit me in the future, but it is a choice to have children and you have made that choice.

Only if those children grow up to be contributors - and that's a big if, with fewer than 60% of UK adults paying any income tax at all, let alone being net contributors.

I don't really understand why someone else, in this case the State, should be paying for people to raise the children they've chosen to have.

It isn't a secret that kids cost money. You know this before you decide to have them.

@OnAFrolicOfMyOwn - but we do need jobs to be filled by working aged people to avoid our economy collapsing. Those younger people could be imported, but we do need them.

as many commentators and politicians have started saying the birth rate is too low, it does stand to reason they should start looking at policies that would remove some of the barriers to couples having children/more children. One of those is cost - having more disposable income could tip the balance for some families to have that 2nd child.

@LimeCheesecake Unemployment is currently on the rise. We have the people, but they are not filling the jobs.

Despite the OP waffling on about how the childfree supposedly resent their taxes paying for education and parks, which no childfree person has said, the only person on the thread who has said they resent something child related being paid from their taxes is the OP.

The OP resents childcare for others being funded from her taxes so I'm pretty sure she has no issues with childcare not being subsidised/tax free etc any more.

So in your plan lower income families get no extra money, only families on higher incomes

So those families who are genuinely struggling to feed their children and heat their homes, they are in exactly the same position?

But this is what fair represents to you? Richer people paying less tax and poorer people getting less benefit? This is your justice?

You get £1,248 a year in child benefit, for the first child, a bit less for others. That is the equivalent of earning c£6,500 tax free at 20% if you were in a family where the mother was a stay at home mother, with a father who was the main earner, the father would get the benefit of tax free allowances. With Child benefit the mother gets the benefit. I think this is why it was originally set up this way, back in the days when husbands were the breadwinners and mothers were the housekeepers, like my parents life.

None of these things were introduced as a ‘favour to parents’ in your eyes kids seem not to be citizens but merely pets

Until a child is a useful productive member of society in their own right I consider them an extension of their parents. I also think you had them, you pay for them and stop expecting everyone else to prop up your choices

It seems unlikely that the majority of families are in receipt of child benefit. That's not the 'squeezed' middle, if you're eligible for benefits (unless you're old) you're not middle income.

A household with two people earning £49k each qualifies for child benefit. You’re right, that’s not middle income - it’s well above average.

Child benefit isn't a benefit in the usuals sense though. It used to be universal and is now payable in full if neither of you earn over 50,000. People on a joint income of, say, 60,000 wouldn't be eligible for conventional benefits, they're not "poor", but the state recognises that they have additional living costs which the UK chooses to subsidise with a handout rather than a tax allowance.

And the OP is specifically wanting people who earn more than that to get this extra money

But wants it to be instead of UC, so poorer people don't get more money

And if a childfree couple on minimum wage have to pay more tax to fund it that's also fine too as apparently they would have more disposable income than the family on a combined income of 98k

Do you have child benefit mixed up with universal credit/tax credits?

Two earners at a £49k is at the threshold of eligibility, but it could as equally by one earner at £49k. Such is the odd administration of the benefit.

Child benefit should absolutely be calculated on household income (although I suspect that would be far too complicated to administer) and if we moved to a shared tax allowance that would be ok too (although if there were a significant difference between a couples earnings, you'd end up reducing the higher earners tax)

Calculating child benefit on shared household income hands more power and control to abusive and controlling partners and makes it impossible for abused wives to start building up an escape fund, and makes it impossible for child benefit to be ring fenced for the benefit of the children. It would be morally repugnant to throw these most vulnerable women under the bus because some wealthier households miss out. I agree it's not fair that some wealthy people get CB and other wealthy people don't, but solving that unfairness would literally kill people so it's an unfairness I can live with.

Any state support for families with children absolutely must be done through increasing child benefits and child tax credits, not by increasing the tax free allowance. This is because if you do it by increasing the tax free allowance the primary beneficiaries are wealthier households, with the poorest households seeing no change. That is also morally repugnant.

And I absolutely support a system that is far fairer to single parents, a disproportionate number of whom are women

But given the OP wants her tax back because she doesn't want it paying towards other people's childcare I would hazard a guess that she doesn't want a system that's fairer to single parents as they are generally going to be higher uptakers of childcare

Women fought for years for individual taxation. Surely we don’t want to go backwards?

Well, yes, except you also get tax breaks for the children. So a single parent with two kids on £100k would be better off than two married people on £50k each with no kids.

The US tax system is also much more generous. At $100k you've just about squeezed into the 22% bracket, and at $200k you're paying 24%. The highest bracket is 37% and you don't hit that until nearly $600k. Plus all the extra tax breaks for having kids. (Not saying it's better than the UK, which basically has its health insurance built into the tax system so it's swings and roundabouts really. But you're definitely not disincentivised from earning more money, by the time you lose the US child tax credit you're such a high earner that the credit is basically pennies to you.)

I don't see how it's backwards to have the option to be treated as a household for tax purposes if you choose. Having the choice in the first place would be nice!

You can’t pick and choose how you’re taxed. That would be fiscal lunacy.

Yes of course we should. This country is seathing pit of secret communists though so it will never happen. No room for ambition here unless you are already super wealthy with access to capital. The wage slaves (even the well paid ones) are all fucked as the establishment want us all in the same category.