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.

if I remember correctly, if you earn 100k - 104 k you are worse off than earning £99.99k. Its a truly stupid tax.

You’ll want someone to be paying your pension.

at 1.5 kids per couple, we really really need more kids.

It’s £100 to £125k

The whole ‘well entirely remove the personal allowance’ for very high earners thing was ridiculous. Frankly everyone should have the same personal tax free allowance, and pay whatever marginal rates above that are required.

That stupid idea might appeal to the bitterly envious but it creates this absurdity between 100k-125k. Then piling on losing tax free childcare and your child not being entitled to the same early education level as all the other children just makes it much worse.

It’s terrible policy design.

Very few people earning 100k disagree with paying a decent whack of tax. I also agree with you about private schooling.

The point of child benefit is that it is universal. This is a lot cheaper to administer.

Add a point to income tax and let people keep child benefit. People don’t care about sensible tax policies, this one is just stupid.

You sound like quite a jealous person.

Actually its better to have no personal allowance for anyone. So that EVERYONE is contributing, even a little

Don't be an arsehole. That last comment of yours. You might be in that position of struggling to pay bills at some point so just be mindful that luck can change.

The NHS.

Bookie.

Why? You think because people are struggling that it’s OK not to prioritise nursery bills when UC are paying 85% of them?

Perhaps. Still it should be an
everyone gets it or no one does thing. If there’s a personal tax free allowance, it should be universal whether you set it at 0, £50 or £50k.

I don’t earn close to £100k and I still think it’s absurd - but the government’s aims was to make it confusing so they didn’t have to be open about how high the marginal rate of tax they wanted people to pay actually is.

Yes. Which is poor governance and completely dishonest. If they want a system where people in specific brackets have a higher marginal rate than surrounding areas, they should be open about it and make that case. The same with the deliberate attempts to use fiscal drag.

The diplomatic services, the armed forces, HMRC, road safety policy, bovine TB control programmes, newt protection services, the land registry, carbon emissions monitoring and trading schemes…

Loads of stuff. That’s just the tip
of the stuff the state does you don’t even think about iceberg.

peak Mumsnet

Why do you think they're investing? They're not stupid. They want a good return for their investment, as they've almost certainly been promised.

I didn't say that. I just find it distasteful to mock somebody on a low income struggling to pay a bill. That might be you.

She isn’t on a low income. She earns £45k!

And UC pays 500 quid towards the cost of her nursery fees, which she resents paying.

When she is in receipt of 3 year funding, her nursery fees will be 20 quid a month.

It will be very interesting to see if they end up getting a return for their investment. They face several hurdles:

1. If nursery fees increase to a price beyond which people cannot pay, they will lose any means of getting a return for their investment.
2. Once most people are in receipt of funding, it will be the local authorities and not the investors dictating the rules. If someone in receipt of 30 hour funding decides not to pay for wraparound fees or food, but wants to send their child when it suits THEM and not the nursery, and the local authority backs them up, the investors won’t be able to do a thing about it.
3. Minimum wage will rise alongside the increased fees. The profit margins are already tiny - how can this possibly change?

I don’t know why investors are interested in nurseries - it’s a complete mystery to me. It’s never been an industry that makes money serious enough to attract investment. Your average nursery owner would struggle to get a mortgage or a bank loan.

That said, I don’t work in finance, obviously. So there must be some incentive that I’m not aware of.

However, in the past it was debated and determined in Parliament that tax status should be individual. Until about (someone will tell me) most benefits and entitlements were calculated on HOUSEHOLD income. Married women didn't get asked for tax returns, but the costs of having and bringing up children, including loss of work earnings were largely credited to women. It wasn't perfect and my DM fell foul of the rules via a nasty divorce and a later partner dying suddenly.

But when women started to be a significant element in the workforce, some of them very successful and big earners, then there was a rush to tax them like men and the hoops that women jump through to keep all the balls in the air were dismissed as trivial. Because most men assume that the work women do is inconsequential, unless the woman is their line manager.

My DH, who's a pretty good egg on balance, only occasionally remembers that it was my earnings/property that paid off our mortgage and funded the start of our pension. Yes, he has contributed a lot since then, and it has been his earnings that have fed us for years, but when he started his business, it was my earnings that paid for food and electricity. But partnerships, especially marriages, are stronger together and after 30-odd years, we're probably about even.

Oh yes, I can totally understand the frustration.

A bit like being say, a care assistant or a nursery worker on a low wage but with your work supporting society, the low wage meaning it's cheaper and more affordable for those who want and need it - and then having those on £100k winge about the fact they are paying for all the services you use because you're a lazy scrounger who couldn't be bothered and just wants everyone else to pay for them, you're resented for the wage you earn and job you do - probably by a fair amount of the very people who rely on one or both of those roles to look after their family while they do all that hard work and sacrificing.

Oh yes, I can see the frustration, although as the saying goes "Money doesn't matter but it's more comfortable doing your crying in a Mercedes than on a bicycle".

The resentment goes both ways, but one side of the argument are a lot more financially secure than the other.

A few comments on here that seem rather derogatory towards low earners- implying those earning that must be “low skilled” or “trapped” well I don’t earn far more than £12k and I have a degree. I used to earn over £40k 20 years ago (in my early twenties) but I went part time in a different job, intentionally ( was very hard to work part time in my old industry) so to assume everyone on low incomes has accidentally failed is wrong. I made the choice because I don’t want to work many hours. And others aren’t subsiding me either, I get no benefits at all because my husband earns a good salary and his tax pays for everyone else. So stop assuming everyone on £12k are either sponging off other families or have failed. When I have most of my time off to do other things I enjoy and spend time with my children I don’t consider that losing at life. I think I am lucky I had the choice to earn less and have more time.

‘Bettering’ themselves? Life isn’t all about money to everyone and some don’t strive to work in jobs that pay large amounts. You can ‘better’ yourself in other ways than just making more money 🙄

Bettering your family doesn't automaticaly mean earn more money. Cultural capital is always cited on MN as enabling/liberation from impoverished origins. Some will take that forward to earn big bucks and others will plough it back in to help a niece or an aunt who may have made an ill considered choice of partner.

I'd like my DC to earn well, because it will definitely make life smoother, but I would like them to do so doing what they want, ideally without a payscale dictated by government.

Your partner sounds like he/she must be quite close to £100k if your combined is £120k, have they looked at pension contributions to bring them below?

Sorry if I'm overstepping just wanted to point that out if you weren't aware. The cliff edge is such that (depending on number of DCs) you're not really better off until earning £120k~ vs £99k.