Middle earners punished

[Eucalyptus321]

I am feeling so disheartened and frustrated by how middle earners are constantly suffering at the hands of ridiculous government priorities. My husband and I have a greater household income than other families we know but have less cash in hand due to increased taxes coupled with the fact we receive zero benefits like child benefit or tax free childcare etc. ZERO. If they want middle earners to fund the country thought tax then at least support us with childcare costs. It’s a joke that two parents earning £99k each get childcare funding but parents with one £101k salary and one £25k salary receive nothing. I just need to speak to people who understand the burden of raising a family amidst the current financial climate and then the potential of further tax rises!

Absolutely this 😊

Agreed. Services are rubbish, and not necessarily funding issues but structural + lack of work ethic.

There is a problem when higher earners feel they have to buckle down. You lose a bit of hope and expectation that life can be more enjoyable but also that trickles down to other people’s jobs. Objectively we’re a high earning household but we definitely don’t have the life I’d have expected for the income. Now some of that is a choice- we’re currently paying for private school for one child but we have been hit very heavily with VAT.

In turn, to fund that additional expense we have cut expenditure. We used to have a cleaner and someone to help us with the garden. Both of those have now gone which has had a knock on impact on the income of those individuals. We have cut down on our food shop and we’re not eating out as much. If other people are the same, that will be hitting the economy

Re the minimal wage increases… my husband ran the numbers for the company he works for. That represents over £700k cost for them that they don’t have easily to hand. That means prices will have to go up or job losses, probably both. Businesses are also really struggling at the moment and not every company is like Amazon with massive profits. If they squeeze too hard on business; everything will come crashing down.

But people in the middle ( who have a similar net income to.someome on benefits ) may end up losing the entire value of the home they bought in care fees. Whereas the person on benefits.will get the care for free. And pension credit means if you only save a modest pension the person who lived on benefits will probably end up on a similar income

Their children will get scholarships it they go to university and are likely to get places on all sorts of access to university schemes

I am still going to work, because I love my job and it makes a difference. But I can see why we have a productivity crisis. If I am working with a chronic health condition why should my taxes pay for someone else to make a lifestyle choice to live on benefits

It’s fascinating as that sounds like an accusation!

Let me know if you want to swap with me. Disabled children, can only work very reduced hours on a low paid job (I was a high tax payer before having the DC and had to throw my career away). No break, no respite, no holiday, no nothing - I have no life (but yes we get some benefits but I can assure you, life is pretty shit and you wouldn't last in my shoes a day). Check your privilege!

also your aren't a 'middle' but a very high earner.

Brilliant post - we are in exactly the same boat right down to the schooling.

God knows what the answer is.

If you are a taxpayer then you have every right to express how you feel about it.

What is stopping you or your husband from achieving earning over £100k? Stop trying to imagine what you would do with the extra £2k and put your plan into action - you seem to imply it’s easy!

I mean yes, in my experience, you will regularly have to work a 70 hour week (unless you find one of those unicorn jobs where it’s 9-5 for over £100k), but for most of us, the path to that salary is gruelling. Early starts commuting on freezing cold trains in winter, because at 6am the heating on the trains haven’t fully kicked in. Leaving the house in the dark, returning in the dark. Working every Sunday evening. That’s the corporate world for many on over £100k. Frankly, even that is a bit of a walk in the park compared to reaching that salary as a doctor. Don’t get into a pissing contest with a doctor (or their long suffering other half) on how tough the journey is to earning over £100k.

I am being facetious, because I know people who work extremely hard and for far less money (my own parents for example, my mum was a hotel chambermaid and that is truly back breaking work and my dad didn’t live long enough to receive his state pension). Neither DH or I grew up wealthy or even comfortably off, we were motivated to work hard and we did. But there have been massive sacrifices to achieving this, including delaying having a child, and only having one child because childcare costs were equivalent to our eye watering mortgage on our SE home. We have never received any state assistance. We don’t expect medals and we pay our taxes because that is the only way a functioning society can survive. However, it is galling to be faced with increased tax rises and comments from people who say “oh, what I could do with all that extra money.” Because in my experience it is going on childcare, holiday clubs, after school clubs etc. to allow the parents to keep working the long hours needed.

If there is no financial incentive to work longer hours for those on UC, it is equally the same for those on over £100k. DH is looking at dropping hours, I already have. Multiply this across the board and it explains the productivity gap in the UK. Fewer high earners contributing tax is not a good thing.

I’ll stop ranting now.

Earn 150k and you pay £58k in tax actually, £65k in Scotland.

I feel nervously optimistic that today’s budget will
mark the beginning of the end for Reeves and Starmer.

Oh please just don’t. Now they are going after home owners too. There is no end to this shitshow. It is unfair and unacceptable.

Who are you going to get instead because I don't see anyone better.

It's entirely.possible to own a home and still recieve universal credit. I know a lot of people who do.

But I think whoever will replace them will be worse. Tories might address the disability benefits but not the triple lock. But I think it’ll be Reform who get in.

I think you may have missed the point.

But if they worked they just might achieve all this. I feel little sympathy for someone who does not work complaining that they don’t have the same as everyone else when it could be easily remedied by getting a job.

I honestly couldn’t give one, because it means they’ve gone for a reason and the next will be constrained in terms of the policies they can implement.

That works.

Remember, Labour brought this upon themselves.

High earners and mansion tax? Plus private schools VAT, income tax, council tax increase. When does it end?

Good luck with that line of attack. There’s no point in disincentivising work and earning. Everyone needs those taxes.

Exactly. Take the bold decisions people want to see or someone else will.

I am from a disadvantaged background so I am part of a lot of groups where I have a lot of insight into the system and help available - it is honestly crazy. I have friends on UC who take their kids regularly to the cinema, baby gym, theme parks, go out for coffee, buy branded food - we can't do any of this at all. There is even now a low income savings account where you put £50 in and it gets doubled and you can keep it under 6000 to avoid it impacting any claims. I don't begrudge any of my friends or anything because at a certain point it becomes a logical decision. The question is why we are allowing it to be the logical decision.

As I said, my friend even has her child in private school at no cost, and on top of that will get priority for university (usually private school applicants have that counted against them). No worries about housing, extra hardship fund to help with bills, work stress. Stripping benefits back to basics is seen as mean and deprivation, but the alternative is that people have a better quality of life on them.

I agree they’re both incompetent but who in the Labour party do you think will be any better? They’re incapable of doing anything but tax and not just spend but give it away in welfare

Fear not - the government will pay…