To be irritated by this £100k a year whiner

[Viviennemary]

On Question Time tonight they were talking about subsidised childcare and the new benefits for younger children. Then a woman came on with a boo hoo sad face and said she wouldn't be getting it. So I think Fiona Bruce said because your income is £100k a year plus Then she said that it wasnt fair as there was only one wage. And their household only had one earner.

Well tough. Folk on just over £12k a year are paying tax and this cheeky woman thinks her child care should be subsidised. It made me mad.

It totally depends why they have 1 income.

They could have:
Disabilities
Multiple babies so both working isn't possible
Poor earning potential so better off SAHM for now

I was a SAHM for a few years with my twins because the cost of childcare made going back to work impossible. My husband didn't earn £100k but was still a high enough earner to pay our bills but the lack of child benefit and other help meant that it was very tight.

It should clearly be based on household income.

All jobs are necessary for a functioning society, otherwise they wouldn't exist.

Now parents are expected to go back to work when children are just babies and those wanting to stay home are frowned on by society childcare should be fully subsidised like schools.

The government needs to overhaul the whole system. Those working in childcare are experienced professionals taking on the jobs of lost services such as speech therapists etc as as well as education but are still seen as babysitters.

Funding for childcare should be at a level that settings can pay staff a decent professional wage - this might tempt childcare workers who have left the profession to return.

It should be free at point of use for parents which means the government really does need to look at the real cost of provision for the children. They should also provide extra funding for SEN within a term of it being identified so extra staffing can be made available for one to one if behavioural issues are present.

I disagree with ‘your choice to have children so pay’ - having children eventually benefits a society so that society has a duty towards them.

I would also like to see financial support for parents who would like to stay home a bit longer as there are benefits to the children. Not all are cut out for childcare environments.

I never get all these comments about how household income should be taken into account. It’s not like these children are the immaculate conception is it? There is another parent living in another household who should be contributed to that child’s upbringing.

I appreciate they may not be, but that’s a different problem isn’t it? In principle for the sake of this argument, that child has another parent also earning.

I also have a problem when people say higher earners are "propping up" the rest of us. Well, so are the lower earners, including those childcare workers that the higher earners are paying to look after their children. If they decided to stop going to work, if the refuse collectors and care home workers and supermarket workers decided to stop going to work then the higher earners and the entire country would be in a bit of a mess, wouldn't it. All jobs are important, that's why they are there

So, so true. During lockdown it was those people who kept the wheels turning. How quickly we’ve forgotten.

I disagree. My dad worked in the car retail industry on low pay for most of his working life. The garages he worked for sold prestige brands. Society doesn’t need prestige cars to function, in fact with decent public transport it doesn’t need nearly as many cars. Needs and wants are two completely different things.

You are wrong, why shouldn't she get the same support as everyone else? I don't see why my children aren't allowed child benefit for example because I earn over a certain amount. When I lived in scandanavia, everyone got child benefit, everyone got free nursery and everyone got free school including private school and we all got free university.
Why penalise the people who are paying more into the system?

Nobody needs a luxury car, you're right. But that place employing people gave people jobs so they could support themselves, and generated revenue.

When I lived in scandanavia, everyone got child benefit, everyone got free nursery and everyone got free school including private school and we all got free university.

What was the tax rate? If we paid Scandinavian levels of tax we could have those things too. But, as you can see from this thread, some high earners already feel hard done by - they’d spontaneously combust if their tax bill doubled.

I think people who earn more should absolutely pay more taxes.

What they shouldn't do is also get fewer services from the country.

We don't say "you earn loads so you shouldn't get access to the NHS" or "you earn loads so your children shouldn't get to go to school".

I think if you feel like you both pay a lot of tax and have no ability to access many of the societal benefits that come from taxation it's much more likely to result in resentment (and those people ultimately voting for lower taxes).

Whereas if you can provide a universal service then those paying more taxes are just paying more for their services because it's within their means to do so.

Obviously it doesn't work for things like benefits that are designed to top up income, but for most things - childcare, NHS, schooling, dentistry, optometry, provision of council services, libraries (and i think potentially even doing something with social care) universal access with increasing taxes according to your wage would be my preferred option.

OP I can appreciate why you might think £100k sounds like a massive salary. I’ve written about this before - but let’s break the numbers down a bit.

£100k less basic pension + student loan is £4,855 a month.

Childcare for one is easily £2k. For two you can be looking at £4k. This is 80% of your monthly pay.

Housing is pretty similar. £2-3k a month on a mortgage will afford you a pretty modest house in London.

This means the loss of childcare benefits at £100k actually has a significant impact. Combined with the loss of personal allowance, for me personally, I would be £0 better off on income between about £100-135k. That’s £35k of income with an effective tax rate of 100% - what’s the point of earning it?

The combination of loss of personal allowance + loss of childcare benefits has created the highest marginal tax rate on the planet - no wonder people are annoyed about it, it is completely irrational.

I think the same. She presumably has the choice not to earn so much and get free childcare.
Do most people on here live in or around London? I live in a big city and even before my free hours for DS kickef in we were paying around £850 a month and that is at one of the most expensive nurseries. Yet everyone on here seems to pay a minimum of £1k a month.
Guess it's a choice. Earn less and get free hours, earn more and don't.

In my country childcare for everyone is about 50EUR (government pays the rest). Salaries are the same as in the UK so are other costs and taxes.

Childcare in the UK is a massive money spinner, as for the lady who earns 100k- its not a lot if she is a single earner, she wont get any UC, other discounts that someone on minimum salary does and since the lady has worked herself to be in a good job why should she be penalized for this? Good for her and she should be able to keep her hard earned money and at th same time parents with smaller incomes should not be selling a kidney either. In my homeland there is also parents salary whr government pays you whatever you were paid at work for 18 months and the job must be kept open by law, mums must take it the first few months after that mums can give parents salary to the father and father will get what his salary was at work for he rest of the months. If mum was unemployed she will get full minimum salary+ large family benefits if they have 3+ children worth about 450 pounds a month,increases with each child. (large family benefit is to encourage bigger families as there are just 400 000 my national language speakers in the world)

Insane really, mothers miss out on precious early years with their kids and then hand their salary over to the nursery worker.

Or you could say the people doing vital jobs for low wages - eg, police officers, nurses, teachers, sanitation workers - are propping up the functioning of society itself for those doing non-vital jobs for massive wages. Depends on your perspective.

You can't double the tax paid of people evening between £100-125. They already pay 67p in the £ which is MORE per £ than they pay when they earn over £125k.

My partner doesn't yet earn above the threshold but his next pay bump likely will push him over. And he's going to have to ask not to get the whole thing as then we'll lose out on the help and actually we really do need it. I work part time (as otherwise nursery costs would outstrip my take home) and earn just enough that I can cover nursery and my bills. His salary then covers mortgage, council tax, bills, all food. We aren't left with much at the end of the month.

The other option is to move sideways to a much larger firm where he might be able to ask for a pay rise that covers the shortfall but I'll likely barely see him (hardly do now anyway to be fair) as weekend and holiday working will likely be expected.

It's not that fun.

Higher earners are paying Scandinavian levels of tax, hence being annoyed about being excluded from the services they’re funding.

For a person with a student loan they are paying >50% on everything over £50k now.

Between the removal of the personal allowance and loss of childcare support I am paying an effective rate of over 100% between £100-125k.

Not really possible to increase that.

Tell that to the many countries with aging populations. Governments are increasingly trying to encourage people to have more children.

Their tax bill wouldn’t double, in fact at £101k in the UK you move into the effective tax rate of 60% which is higher than the top rate of tax in all European countries.

He needs to put everything above 100k into pension until kids are out of childcare

People in the 100k range bracket are some of the most penalised financially as they pay significant amounts of tax, lose out on all benefits and probably have a demanding and stressful job. It's about fairness.

Child benefit is no longer universal either.

I think the thing that rubs people up the wrong way is the failure to acknowledge that even after tax deductions at £100k you are still significantly better off than a very large proportion of the country

Not a problem- just pay more into your pension/salary sacrifice a car perhaps if NHS and then you can receive it. END.