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!

Why anyone whose household income is above 75K thinks the tax payer should subsidise their lives is beyond me

But it's okay for that person to pay for parents who choose not to work or have more than 2 children?

Why anyone whose household income is above 75K thinks the tax payer should subsidise their lives is beyond me. You have children you pay for them and yes child care is expensive but it is not for ever.
This country has got into a mentality that the government should pay for us to raise children, pay for people having an illness even if they can do a full time job etc just because it costs a little more than someone else.

This is so funny. I think your outrage is misdirected. It is not the high earners like the OP's household with two working adults who need to be told that. It's people who actually ARE paid to have children and who receive disability benefits for conditions that would not preclude them from working.

Are you also addressing those who earn under £75 because it’s not the responsibility of those who earn that over that amount to fund the children of others or their universal credit because they don’t want to work more than 3 days a week.

It’s tapered so that doesn’t make sense.

Yep, I used to get really narked at the ‘taxpayers alliance’ moaning about any kind of subsidies on the rail network, whereas most people using the rail network regularly were indeed taxpayers and would have been pretty pro costs coming down - clearly the taxpayers alliance only wanted to serve ‘taxpayers’ that had exactly the same agenda for tax as themselves.

Spot on OP. Lower income, we got given lots of things we had to fund ourselves in the middle income range. But you have to go through that difficult middle income stage to get to the higher incomes, where it becomes easier again. A change of country helped us too and we've paid crap loads of tax in that country instead. Yet we don't mind as we don't feel like we're getting less while paying more.

It is though. It's literally how it works.

I'm glad you're not entitled to those hours for those children you chose to have, because you and your husband earn a lot and should be paying for all the childcare. I don't want to be subsidising your family. It's not rocket science, is it?

You also choose to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet.

Maybe give up your part-time job and look after your kids full-time to save money.

Doesn't Matter.

a) the absolute sums are still massive. I’ll have paid between £25k and £50k a year over the course of 7 years for my two. The total of this is around £200,000 of net income over that time period. A mortgage elsewhere in the UK.

b) Incentives. The cost of childcare and the high value of being excluded from help, means people work less / try to lower their incomes to ensure they can claim it.

They don’t feel temporary when you are facing oncer 10 years of it

and you should know that when it's over £125K you pay 60% tax if you include NI.

People whinge because many have worked their balls off with Masters and PhDs , years of hard work and long hours. You don't earn that sort of money doing 9-5 jobs. Many of these jobs are in London and the SE where housing is ££££.

And yet you are penalised because you get no benefits like 30 hrs child care.

A reform or Tory shill post.

‘I earn over £100k and are middle earners’

no you’re fucking not. Grow up

There's no doubt we are shafted in the SE when it comes to house prices, I was having a nosy at houses in Worcestershire, and there was a lovely house for sale, 4 bedrooms, detached, quiet village, (village looked lovely actually) on at £450,000 a house similar in the SE would easily be £650,000-£750,000 maybe more, I know it's always been that way but even so

People who think entitledto is worth listening to aren't people who should be doing out benefits advice - benefits advisor here and its LAUGHABLY wrong - like, I genuinely think its propagandous and no BA would ever, ever use it to try and estimate a claim.

I look forward to when the middle income earners have left or reduced their hours and people like you have to start paying proper amounts of tax rather than being subsidised by higher earners. It might to quote you "bring you back to reality".

Lower earners in the UK pay less tax than lower earners in France, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Germany, Norway, Sweden. I look forward to the reality of lower earners in the UK paying the same amounts of tax as similar people in Europe. For example in Belgium the 40% tax rate kicks in at 2000 euros a year income.

You pay 60% tax on that above the threshold not on all of it. And so what? Good! Top 4% earners who’ve had the money/ luck/ intelligence to earn that should support others.

You're out of touch.
Middle earners can easily be £50K a year each.

That's not a huge income when teachers at 21 start on £30K.

Do you know how much my childcare bill is for my school aged children? £400 a month for 4 days for 1 child. I have 2 children. I pay for breakfast and after school club to allow me to work full time. If I don’t pay this, I can’t work. After nursery years we are looking at before and after school care for our kids until they are in primary. That’s six to seven years more. Per child. I wish it was just the nursery years. Do you also want me to tell you how much the childcare bill is during the holidays?

As a young family, presumably his income will also keep going up with time as well. And you are already a high earning household. Isn't that amazing? Look for the positive in your position.

Believe me, I do understand your feelings. I would say in our son's school circle, we are among the lower earners. And that is with one high and one very high salary between us. I have previously felt everyone else is having incredible holidays every half term etc. In reality, it is probably less than a quarter each time. We have prioritised education, overpaying our mortgage and pension savings over holidays, others will have made other choices. It has been a slog at times but will be retiring early with generous pensions while others are working into their 70s.

Lots of very exasperated people in London / South East in this situation.

The exclusion from childcare / cost of housing thing is a huge problem.

Not hard to find households in this situation - I’d say most parents at my nursery have it.

Um no. If you’re both on £50k then what non benefits are you suffering from. Someone has misread the memo….

But it doesn’t matter why. The incentive is there. As you have said better for people two to be earning just under £100k for the family. So it encourages the lower earner to stay in employment, contribute to a pension, and have the means to look after themselves and their family if something terrible happened and they had to be a lone parent (as you read about so much on here). Also encourages the higher earner to compromise their salary in order to spend more time with the family and share the load.

Less take home? My take home pay after tax is £1750! DH's is even less. Please do tell us how your take home pay on 90k is less than mine.

We are all taxed equally, it's only the amount above 50k which is taxed at the higher rate. It is incorrect to say that you have less take home money than people on lower salaries.

That second sentence is not necessarily true, depending on your personal circumstances. If you take childcare into consideration, someone on £101k could be thousands of pounds a year worse off than someone on £99k. And even at lower income levels, you have to factor in benefits. A single homeowner (with a mortgage) on £30k could well have less net income than a family of 5 renting with a single worker earning £16k.

Have you ever seen the Laffer Curve?