AIBU to hope the £100k cliff edge for funded nursery hours is removed?

[horchatatresleches]

News is that the education secretary is looking at nursery funding but it’s unclear if it’s to reduce or increase the support available at either the upper or lower thresholds. AIBU to hope that the harsh cliff edge which stops all nursery funding at £100k is removed or least replaced with something tapered so that people aren’t losing money for being marginally above the threshold?

I don’t even earn £100k. I earn a decent salary; but the extra effort, time and responsibility to earn a higher salary isn’t worth it for me when half of it gets taken in tax

In the childcare example though, you’re paying for a service that you actually need to use - but are excluded from using it yourself.

So 97% of preschool children have their early years care funded in part by the state… but the other 3% of users are expected to pay privately for the same service.

The fact that it’s such a small number of users that are excluded is what makes it so absurd.

Less than 10% of GPs work full time. What is the sense in encouraging (or even forcing) more GPs to work fewer hours to minimise their salaries.

Around 50% of female consultant doctors work part time. As more women than men are now going to medical school, we should be looking at why people are working part time and what this is going to mean for workforce planning. Maybe it just means that we need far more doctors (and therefore more training places and additional cost). But that’s all fine, because some rich people are getting soaked, even though they can’t afford anything like the same life style that someone now retired would have enjoyed.

Its a small percentage but also hidden in that small percentage are women who are effectively forced out the workplace by their partners salary which leaves them particularly vulnerable to financial and other domestic abuse. Services for women in a situation like this are also geared up for much lower earners too and are oversubscribed. So women in this position are even more stuck because they are caught between a lifestyle and social expectations and being shut out of help because they don't tick the right boxes. The catch 22 being if they are being financially abused, on paper they look like they have means but in practice they can't get hold of it yet they are shunned as being somehow priviledged and should be grateful for the life they have. There is a massive stigma and misunderstood area for well off middle class women in abusive situations because they are thought of as 'making a choice' or not being as deserving of help as others. Being able to work and not be penalised for it would build in security and escape routes for them because it would be easier for them not to fall into some of the same traps and to be able to leave on their own terms if they needed to. This invisibility of a problem owes a lot to this blindness and determination to 'punish the rich'. Somehow they don't count...

That's not the same.

Paying for something and not benefitting from it because it doesn't apply to you is one thing (e.g being child free and not accessing free state education). But paying for something and then being denied it when it does apply to you is another. It would be like being refused a school place or being refused universal credit.

£100,000 wouldnt even cover a year of rental? (or was it another figure you were talking about?)

where do you live?

I suspect she wants people she perceives as wealthy to suffer, even if there's a net loss to the treasury.

I suspect that’s aimed at me. Someone earning £100k isn’t a rarity in my circles. I’m not jealous, my income doesn’t rely on benefits and I don’t want anyone to “suffer”. It’s interesting - although tediously predictable- how it gets personal when someone presents the other side of the argument.

It's not the either side of the argument though is it? There's some fairly clear evidence that people would be less tax efficient if there wasn't the cliff edge, likely paying more tax overall, including longer term for women who then have less incentive to step back professionally, but you won't have it.

And btw taxation is a total disincentive to have a higher income and therefore spend more in general - I'm self-employed and make extremely sure I don't tip over into higher rate tax. It's better off in my pension than in the treasury. If there was less fiscal drag, I'd take more out and spend more. Now I don't, and not only that, I'll retire earlier.

And btw taxation is a total disincentive to have a higher income and therefore spend more in general

Not in my experience. I had absolutely no problem with taking pay rises and enjoying the money. You should try it, it makes life much more pleasant.

There always jas to be a threshold, which is never going to make everyone happy. It could be tapered and paid accordingly but also ion a very high salary then it will probably increase and childcare is temporary is the devil's advocate. Xx

But what about as in the case of anyone with a nursery age child earning between £100-125k or two nursery age children earning between £100-150k and instead of taking a pay rise and enjoying the money, they take a pay rise and have less money because of it. Because if you’d tried that, you would have found it makes life much less pleasant.

But that's the issue isn't it. When you have kids in nursery, you don't get to enjoy the money because you lose it all and then some.

Of we could take the pay rise and enjoy the money, we wouldn't be complaining.

It’s temporary. Children are in nursery for four years, a career spans four decades. It’s short term pain for long term gain.

But no-one (other than you apparently) wants to be worse off for earning more many, regardless of how temporary it is. So it’s not a surprise that almost everyone salary sacrifices to get below the limit which reduces tax take for the Treasury because the pain is pretty painful. When it’s smaller like the loss of child benefit, or even the loss of tax free childcare some people will take the hit, but almost no-one will happily lose £50k gross pay for years. And if someone has two children, which isn’t an unreasonable desire, that’s eight years

Two kids three years apart which isn't untypical. That's not four years. That's seven. So parents in these circumstances only have one kid at most ...

No one does it though.
No matter how much it 'makes sense' to you!

Almost every doctor I know stays under the cut off as we are not free to put extra in pensions.

And none of us will do extra as there's no incentive. Happy to take unpaid leave and have extra time off with the family rather than working harder to lose out. Shocker, that.

No one does it though.

I’m sure some people do.

It really is the same!!!

and now I realise that you are probably passed the age of paying for childcare, the general cost of raising kids, paying back student loans, paying into a pension, the cost of commuting and quite possibly finished paying the mortgage (or paying rent). So you probably think that £100k is a fortune: it’s more than average but it’s very quickly eaten up

Obviously £100k isn’t a fortune. Don’t be ridiculous.

So to confirm, you're currently well off and of state pension age? Have I got that right?

Its a crude average per head of population. You can cut it other ways but it basically comes back to huge state reliance on a relatively small number of tax payers.

One illustration of this reliance is that a tax payer earning 30k a year pays around 4k tax. A tax payer earning 130k a year pays around 40k tax. The government spends 17k per head of population (including young and old). Even accounting for vat etc the skew doesn't change it much.

This shouldn't be about parental income it should be bout the child. As a society we need new people growing up and contributing.

Surely there is room for state nurseries like state schools. Free to use with the option of private nurseries for those who want them.

This thread is another illustration of the potential conflict between Boomer/Gen X vs Millenials/Gen Z looming. At the end of the day, society is going to have to work for everyone to thrive long term, not just skewed towards the elderly sitting on all the political power and assets.
I would be happy for the younger generation to have access to universal state nurseries, even though I did not benefit myself. When mine were little, I could find a nursery that was £50 a day in London. That is early 2000s. House prices were lower, my student debt was lower.
Given demographic challenges it makes sense to encourage educated women to want to have children, not the opposite and having to choose career vs child/how many children is absurd. Having several kids should not be an unaffordable luxury limited to those getting extra benefits to do so.

Educated career driven women are already structurally disincentivised from having children young as typically studied longer, climbed career and when they do have them, it is often in short succession, out of biological need etc. To penalise them further is madness.
All the research shows that attainment is linked to the educational level of the mother and wealth. So if you want a new generation to replace, this is exactly where you invest, in a reasonable way.
All nursery fees should be tax deductible from top slice of income, as a minimum. After school care etc, as well. Nothing else really makes sense. The state could easily apply assumptions in PAYE itself depending on how many kids you have as a tax allowance. It is what they do in some countries.