Fed up of my cousins comments about benefits and UC

[glassor2]

I’m a single mum of two kids, ages 13 and 5. My older son has a relationship with his dad, but my younger son’s dad moved away a couple of years ago and doesn’t see him often-usually once or twice a year. He doesn’t provide any financial support, and since he moves around for work (he used to live in Canada and now lives in Australia), it has been challenging to get child maintenance to chase him.

I work 3-4 days a week (sometimes more if there’s overtime available) and receive a top up from UC. My mum occasionally helps with child care, but she also has a full time job. It can be difficult handling everything on my own, but I manage.

Anyway, I have a family member I'm quite close to, and she often makes comments, not aimed at me, but towards people who claim UC. For example, she mentioned that it's unfair for her to pay almost £300 a month in tax while others can work part time and avoid paying anything (I don’t earn enough to pay tax) and that she has to pay more to subsidise the people that don't. She even told the entire family that she pays almost £400 a month, including national insurance, which made things awkward and nobody knew what to say.

From what I know, she doesn't earn a huge wage, so I can see why it would be frustrating for her to have to pay that much. It's a lot of money. However, it's not our fault, and if she's upset, her anger should be directed at the government, not at those who are rightfully claiming.

Everyone’s situation is different, and some people need help. I never chose to be a single parent, and I can't control the fact that my ex chose to leave and decided not to support his child financially. I'm doing my best, just like many others on UC are.

I don't think she's intentionally trying to upset me, but she is.

AIBU? How do I tackle this?

No it really isn’t. It’s the money we are contribute to the government through paying taxes.

But it’s totally irrelevant to the op, she is a single parent and you are taking about a couple, a well off couple

Sure but from money they got from the government paid for from peoples taxes. Wooden dollars as they say.

They aren’t really paying tax on purchases. They are giving back the money through a purchase to the government who gave it to them in the first place.

Yes and even part time and/or low wage workers will pay some tax.
They might not be adding as much into the pot but they are adding some.

And?

It was in response to another comment.

Unless you have a breakdown of all tax she has paid and all the money she has used, you can't possibly know that.
You can't just through an arbitrary number (even if it's from Google, which will be an average at best) and say below this is scrounger above this us contributor.

I will just add a point to those saying employers need to pay more- when we lived in Denmark, their minimum wage actually was not much higher than the UKs , nor was swedens and other Northern European countries too - and with much higher tax levels and less generous tax free allowances. The big difference wasn’t to do with wages, it’s to do with costs - childcare in Copenhagen even for babies was around £280 a month - full time. There was an awful lot more good quality social housing available ‘if Danish’ ( although some refugees got it too) sensible money - there isn’t any council tax, utilities were lower. So whilst people may actually have been taking home slightly less ( if at the lower end of the wages spectrum) their costs out of income were often less. There was also an expectation that unless disabled then both people in a couple worked full time, or close to it , as did single parents - and appropriate wrap around care seemed good.
the people actually it was tougher on were higher earners not benefitting from childcare or social housing and paying high tax but it seemed to be accepted that this was how it was for an ordered society .

as things stand here we have ended up with an awful lot of low to middling wages, moderate tax up to a certain level but poor services and ridiculously high costs and an expectation that low earners can work part time and just get top ups.

the system to put it bluntly doesn’t work and we need to look to places like Scandinavia and see why it does work - problem is it wouldn’t suit those who want to be paid to stay at home or a lot of older well off people who don’t see why they should be paying 42% tax at their stage for stuff they aren’t benefitting from on a day to day basis.

Scrounger? nice

You need to think this through logically. If I gave you £10 from my piggy bank and charged you 10% that goes straight back in the piggy bank. How have you contributed to the piggy bank? Just to avoid confusion, this is not a real piggy bank.

Do you think landlords should house people for free then?

Sorry it's too late in the evening for maths so I haven't a clue 😂
I was just saying that even those on part time low wage jobs pay tax.
I paid tax from 18 (or is it 16 as I had a part time job?) until 31 despite rarely going above minimum wage.
I don't pay tax now as I am a carer and receive carer's allowance.
Should I not be entitled to the carers allowance (that comes from the government pot) just because I "only" paid a smaller amount of tax due to my low wage?

I agree with you wholeheartedly needmorelego. You talk a lot of sense

No I think you should receive it, I think it should be used for things like that.

@DuckbilledSplatterPuff Oh dear! You think NI goes to pensions? It 100% does not! There’s no crock of gold (pension) with your name on it that you have saved for via NI. NI is an additional tax but not paid by pensioners. If they have an income it should be, but that’s another issue.

Many women with school age dc work full time. They use wrap around care at school. Of course people doing a few hours part time to avoid tax and get UC know exactly what they are doing.

How so?

The landlord thing is another daft quirk of the system though. Landlords receive housing benefit from the Government indirectly, are charged punitive amounts of tax and compliance costs by the Government, put the rents up to cover the costs which in turn costs the Government more in housing benefits.

Its really difficult/galling when it seems that a lot of people manage on UC working part time. For most of us part time work just isn't an option, we have to work full time & use more childcare etc for very little more income.

Op how many hours are you actually doing if paying no tax at all? Even on minimum wage full time is £24k ish for a 37.5 hour week and tax kicks in above £12.5k, are you working less than 20h a week?

Yes and even part time and/or low wage workers will pay some tax

No, you get a tax free allowance of £12.5k. If you work under about 20h a week you can be paying no income tax all. You might pay some vat but you won't be much as there's not much on food, things for kid etc
.

Oh Dear! 😂
I've already corrected my original description of NI.
It is different to income tax though.
The contributions towards NI affect whether, and at what rate you are eligible for benefits like State Pension after you reach a certain age.

I never said it was a tax paid by pensioners. ??? I pay NI myself.

I have no idea why you are telling me the following.
"Many women with school age dc work full time. They use wrap around care at school. Of course people doing a few hours part time to avoid tax and get UC know exactly what they are doing."

It is not a topic I ever commented on. Nor was I accusing anyone of tax avoidance.

I can’t work full time because I don’t have anyone to help with my son.

He's 5 so he's in school. You can get uc childcare costs and use after school club which is what most parents do.

It really is worth it, especially when you add pension.

I don’t think the claim is true but say it is, it’s because it’s not properly funded. So say for example the government pays £5 per hour to the nursery for each 3 year old attending. But the actual cost to the nursery is £7 per hour. Nurseries can’t run at a loss so they have to make the shortfall up and one of the ways they do that is to charge more for the non funded hours, and the target audience for that is parents who don’t qualify for the funded hours or children who attend more hours than the 15/30. So some people may actually pay more than they would if the funded hours didn’t exist, effectively they are subsidising other children’s places.

I’m tired so sorry if that doesn’t make a huge amount of sense .

The second part was not directed at you @DuckbilledSplatterPuff - it was a separate paragraph. Yes the government link contribution years but happily spend the tax income raised on anything they want. However plenty of people still do think it’s a savings scheme!

It is entirely justifiable for a single mother to work part-time and receive benefits to supplement her income. Unlike a two-parent household, she is solely responsible for both earning a living and raising her children. Expecting the same output from someone in such a fundamentally different and more demanding situation is neither realistic nor fair. Providing support in this context is not a handout—it’s a recognition of the immense burden she carries alone.

Can I ask why part time work isn't an option?