Can’t just be me who is sick of the moaning about the private school VAT and winter fuel payments

[TruthorDie]

The moaning about them seems to be never ending. So tone death and indulgent on both counts. Not sure which is worse. A friends mum was ranting on social media earlier about winter fuel payments being stopped and how “worried about being cold” she was. Bad news is Lynn you haven’t needed to work since 1989, married to an oil exec and have had lots of the good life. I’m sure all of your Florida holidays keep you warm enough!

Bright children can get on anywhere, my siblings and l went to a comprehensive. We all have a couple of degrees, one of us has a PhD so it didn’t hold us back too much in life. Before anyone comes at it from the neurodiversity angle then l am and l wouldn’t be surprised if my younger sibling isn’t

I’m well aware of that. But people love to offer up the argument that their child can’t possibly fulfill their potential if they go to private school, as they are so bright and capable so need to be challenged

The state school supported us but when the school applied for assessment for ehcp the la still came back and said that he could manage in a mainstream school with no additional support required and assessment wasn’t needed so I had to appeal to even get assessment. I’d got to the point though where I was refusing to pick ds up when the school asked me to unless they formally excluded him so the school just wanted us out and did out the pressure on for me to withdraw him but I held fast until I got a place in the specialist. I know of several other children at the same primary who drifted though primary with no ehcps becuase the school managed by asking parents to pick up when they couldn’t manage or parents that were forced out into home educating

The DWP already have a system in place as pensioners whose income is over a certain amount have to pay tax. So they could use the existing system to see who would qualify for fuel payments. They could set the cut off point to say £20,000 per annum which would help the pensioners who need the WFA.

At the moment the cut off point is too low, which is why Age Concern are asking for people to sign the petition.

Pensioners feel the cold more, are less likely to go out, some have mobility problems. If they are cold they are more likely to suffer from associated illnesses and end up in hospital. This will put more strain on the NHS over the winter months.

My MIL hasn’t stopped banging on about the winter fuel payments and sharing things on Facebook. They are far from struggling and spend most of their time holidaying abroad each winter. She also shares “stop the boats” nonsense though and is generally a bit stupid, so she seems to have jumped on another band wagon with this one.

OP, are you familiar with how public sector pensions work? The have just moved from the private sector to the public sector and I am counting myself super lucky!!

doctors get - every year- a guaranteed pension of 1/50 of their salary, for life, indexed for inflation. Train driver get 1/60 on the same basis as does civil servants.

when we are increasing public Sector, we are also increasing the pensions. This is a HUGE cost to the public.

you can do a fun experiment on this. Someone who earns £50k all their career (doctors and train driver make much more than this for most of their careers) and works for 40 years will retire on £33,333 for life. This will be indexed up for inflation and CPI. In order for someone in the private sector to get the same, you need a pension pot of £560k approximately (not sure if that even is inflation/CPI adjusted). How many people can save up for this during their life time?

This is what is such a huge cost for the government. This is where all the money from the pensioners’ fuel allowance will go. Pensioner who (if they are on the breadline) do not have a public pension.

TruthorDie
I’m well aware of that

Are you? Do average ability children do well anywhere?

Why would they? business is only interested in profit and IF they did come up with a Pensioners Tariff, the costs of this lower price would be passed on to the rest of us, many of whom cannot afford to pay more.

No, the Government has to change how the energy market works, there is no competition and very soon, we will all see £150 to £200 go on our bills, with increased standing charges so even if you do cut back, you still pay.

I've been on all the VAT threads and actually that's one argument I haven't heard, unless the local school was so dire that it was actually a reasonable statement. Most of us protesting this policy are in the bracket already mentioned...unmet needs in poor state schools with better ones inaccessible due to catchment prices, or private giving the small, calmer environment than 1000+ comps can, no matter how good they are academically.

He must have very healthy savings, then! People on really low incomes (i.e. below the tax threshold) pay no tax on savings interest of up to £5,000 p.a.

Of course people have heard these arguments. They just tend to see them as the scaremongering they are. Most people don't expect 'loads of cash' either. Just that every little helps. The majority, like I say, simply don't care about your niche issue, so to suggest the government needed to go to the bother of whipping up envy to get this through is beyond ridiculous. About as daft as the idea that before we had a Labour government no one noticed the gulf between the haves and have nots and were not angry at the unfairness. Labour haven't put that idea into the minds of the suggestible poor. How patronising of you to suggest that.

Absolutely. If someone just gets the basic state pension that's £11,492 a year. My 90 year old next door neighbours council tax alone is over 3k a year, and her home is very poorly insulated as she can't afford to update it, so the winter fuel payment was really important to her. She broke her hip so doesn't get out much, so gets very cold. She gets I think a few hundred per year from her deceased husbands work pension which puts her over the threshold. She is incredibly worried that the payment has been stopped, when we pop in with a few groceries for her, she is fretting about this and feels this will make it her last winter as her generation was brought up believing should never get into debt, she will freeze before she does this. Where we are the neighbours will rally round and support her, but this is probably quite rare.

My parents get joint state pensions plus private pensions and they are on around £40k a year, in a very well insulated house, early 70's fit and well.

Neither of these will get the payment, will vastly different situations. Labour has done this in such a crude and cruel way.

& First Group CEO who own, among others GWR, earns millions of £ per year, much of it derived from Taxpayers subsidy.

So why shouldn't a 'driver get a good Pension? its not a job i'd want to do, given the numbers of people who end their lives in front of a train.

Neither would i want to be a Doctor, 10 or 15 years of training, years more to get to consultant level, dealing with horrific injuries or diseases, telling parents their child has an incurable illness.

No thankyou.

I work in tax and I don’t think the mechanism is there to do this currently. Tax at the minute isnt collected by the dwp on pensions it’s collected through hmrc. How it works is that the dwp tell hmrc, automated I guess, how much state pension each pensioner gets. If the person also has a private pension or still works this is operated through paye. Their tax code is amended so that the amount of the state pension is deducted from their personal allowance. Thst tax code is applied to their pension or wages when a payment is made, tax is deducted from the payment by the pension company or employer who then pay this over to hmrc. There are savings allowances and dividend allowances where tax is not paid below a certain amount so hmrc won’t always have these details unless it’s someone who prepares a tax return. The total income would then have to be fed back to dwp for them to see who had less than £20000 and then make payments, it would be costly to do, that’s why they’ve gone for the simple pension credits limit, although I agree it’s too low

Has your neighbour claimed for council tax benefit? I think it is called Coucil Tax Reduction now.

Angelus, your father should look into it. If that is his only income he will not be paying tax and if it is taken off at source a mistake has been made. He should get an annual statement and also a notice of coding so that will say what if any tax allowance he has. Most people who earn under the threshold still to receive the personal tax allowance will have a code of 1257L (ie 12570 tax free a year).
His interest on savings outside an ISA are income although he is likely to be allowed 1000 of that tax free a year.

Loads of women who work full time in professional jobs do not get a personal tax allowance of any kind but for the lower earners there is a personal tax allowance of £12,570 a year. The state pension - the only pension I will receive if I live to age 67 (having paid NI on full time earnings without a break since 1983) - where the person has no income of any kind is less than the single person allowance. Whereas my doctor father worked almost until he died at huge amounts of tax were taken off his NHS pension and state pension because of his work income. I also will probably work until I die so at least 40% of my state pension will be taken in tax which will leave enough just about to pay the almost £5k a year council tax and a bit of my heating bills but not all.

Single mum, child at private school. Circumstances have already changed since we started at the school so now I am in a worse financial situation than when we started. No benefits, no child support, no family, no holidays, struggling to make ends meet, but reliant on school for wrap around care so that I can work and DC is happy and settled at school. School acts like the family we don't have. If I can't make it work any longer and have to move schools then I'll probably move area too as I want the best school for my DC not just the nearest with a space. I'll probably give up my six figure salary and get a term time school hours job so that I can facilitate school activities DC was doing at school.
It's a massive change for us ripping up our support system. The school is everything to us. I will moan about it all I like and I give not one stuff if you think I'm entitled. Of course no one wants to have a massive life change imposed upon them. Of course I don't think it's fair it's been pushed through so quickly. As a previous poster suggested, I think a phasing in of VAT would have been more considerate to children. Who in my position would merrily accept this without moaning?

The SENCO qualification was a one year course a was at Level 7 (Master’s) but has now been downgraded to NPQ, which is below Level 7. There’s never been a requirement for a two-year Master’s. I have 6 years of Master’s level SEN qualifications post-PGCE. IEPs have not been required since the 2015 SEN Code of Practice.

Presumably the high needs students with private assessments will already have EHCPs, which are legal documents - allocated hours of support vary. It is difficult to find highly qualified SEN staff but it is mandatory in state schools, so each will have a SENCO, who must qualify within three years of taking up the position.

I don’t think it will be difficult to recruit 6000 teachers - I just think it will be difficult to retain them given the current exodus from the teaching profession, including early career teachers. The recruitment and retention crisis can only be blamed on the Government that was in power for 14 years until 6 weeks ago.

The VAT on private schools will fund some additional SEN support in state schools, which is only fair. We don’t need top-tier provision for the SEN proportion of 7%, but equality of provision for the SEN cohort of the 93% in state schools.

If they are average, then they are average (for clarity l don’t subscribe to the my super bright child needs private school to challenge them, it’s an argument people make on here). Parents can spend money to polish them a bit if they want to, as is their choice. But l don’t see why they need to go on about it so much about not paying tax on it.

Friend of my brother always had a tutor from the age of 5, went to private school for secondary and then went to university. Got a third, as he won’t have had his hand held so much like most of his education

I think everyone who works themselves to the bone should get a good pension. Most don’t. Almost none in the private sector do.

I am only stating that the salary for the people who just received a big pay lift is much higher than stated - if you take these pension contributions by the tax payer into account. The money saved by disadvantage some private SEN children and some old people will go nowhere near paying for even the salary increases- and with the pensions on top the government is bleeding money.

I think a much fairer way to do this would be to start by offering them to “opt out” of the state pension and get the immediate pay increase (probably about 20% up, at least) That would put them on the same basis as private sector employees (which includes coffee shop workers, self employed, builders etc) and they could then chose to save - or not, just like everyone else.

But if you are paying 40% tax on your state pension your annual income is at least £50000 so you can pay your council tax and heating bills from that, it’s not the same as someone just having to fund everything from the state pension. The personal allowance of £12570 so not just lower earners it’s everyone with income below £100 k a year. The best way for you to cut down on your tax if it’s such a problem to pay it is to stop working but then obviously the income after tax goes down too

Sure “every little helps”, but it’s likely to actually cost them money. Their maths just doesn’t add up.

The level of debate on the “niche” issue suggests people do care. If anything you are lumping everyone in with your opinions.

I don’t think they need to whip up envy to “get this through” - they’ll do it anyway regardless, because they can. It was included front and centre in their manifesto because they knew it would appeal to people’s envy and therefore win votes, without costing it properly. If it was such a “niche” issue, why make it one of their headline pledges?

It’s just pretty pitiful that they are hiding it under a veil of levelling up opportunities when the actual implications for children with many different needs and backgrounds will be devastating.

Yeah l wouldn’t be up for the shifts, years of training and massive responsibility they have. People seem to forget all of this when moaning they get paid too much. When they themselves are in a cozy little office doing paperwork 9-5 or don’t even work at all

As an aside lm loving the random questions! Yep l know people in other countries don’t have electricity. Also l am familiar with public sector pensions, typically they assist with recruit and retaining staff. As the pay is lame, conditions are terrible, the general public like to call them cunts and throw chairs at them

Junior doctors aren't on low pay for long. A junior doctor is all the way up to before you qualify as a consultant.

My ex drove a merc as a junior doctor when he was higher up the scale. They don't stay on peanuts and everyone knows it.

If you're on £33k (and where is such a low salary on the photo attached) you must be 25 and just qualified and left med school.l and after your fy 1 and 2. May I suggest not having a child on a £33k salary at a young age when you just left uni and wait until you earn more money.

I couldn't have afforded a child in my 20s as a junior solicitor. That my dear is called life. You wait for what you want until you can afford it. Build a career and earn some money first like the rest of us have to.

OP I agree with your original post. How many of these pensioners are sitting with a shit ton of equity from the houses they bought for next to nothing (compared to today's prices)? If they are that skint take money out of the house.

Yes, that's what it is after reduction unfortunately. Ours is nearly 4k.