Tories campaigning to remove the childcare maximum income threshold

[FlakyPastries]

Kemi Badenoch has announced that the Tories want to remove the upper income threshold on childcare.

This means all working families will be able to claim it, including those earning over £100k.

Do you agree with this policy?

My baby’s nursery charges £30,000 and the free hours and tax free childcare is worth around £15,000 - so this is quite a significant benefit for those currently unable to claim.

As opposed to the labour party who only make people on benefits, and train drivers richer.

“two people who dosed around in school and have average, easy jobs, get it?”

Wow.

Whisper it but over the last 14 years of Tory rule they hugely increased taxes on the better off and reduced taxes on the less well paid.

And AFAIK they aren’t suggesting ditching IHT but instead lowering the rate from 40%. We currently get IHT mainly from the richest 80-90th percentile. Those under 80th percentile haven’t got an estate large enough and those in the 90th-100th percentile are so rich they can give away their wealth well before they die (or put it in trusts) and avoid IHT that way. If we lowered the rate to 5-10% and removed all exclusions / nil rate bands etc there would be far fewer of the really wealthy bothering to avoid it, it would be fairer on the rest of us as it wouldn’t be such a draconian rate and it would raise more.

But yeh, sensible tax policies are never going to happen here in the UK alas.

When it was introduced very few people faced the cliff edge problem. Now many more are affected. Perhaps a tapered scheme as a first step if the lull change costs too much.
Good to start us thinking and discussing policy and not personalities.

In the mind of the Tory, the rich / wealthy work hard for their money. They should be given the same if not more benefits from the state as the poor.
Get the scroungers back into work to pay for it.
The Nasty Party are back!

dont get me wrong, I think having funded hours from 9 months until kids go to school is brilliant but those on over £100k I’m not sure about this….

what I do think needs pushing is more help with wraparound and holiday childcare.
this would be a massive help to people it can cost a fortune!

They don’t need funded childcare

Arguably no one does.

Universal benefits and contributory benefits are more sustainable and build more solidarity.

Selfishness will bring down the whole thing.

Maybe the feckless 2nd parent ought to step up to the mark and provide for yhe children they created before expecting the taxpayers to fund childcare for high earners. It's not the taxpayers fault that two people made stupid decisions.

Why not get the man you chose to father your children to pay for some of the childcare?

In principle, I completely understand that argument, but I am sceptical that spending £700 million pounds on this will prove value for money in getting people back into work.

I agree that cliff edges in the taxation system are a problem, and would support them being tapered, but anecdotally, I know lots of high earners with small children, and in almost all cases the reason they are not taking promotions or expanding their hours is not the cost of childcare - it’s that they’ve got small children.

I think there are more effective ways to spend £700 million, both to drive growth and/ or to improve the country’s childcare offer. This doesn’t seem like pragmatic, evidence based policy making to me. I do think the Conservatives are going to have to prove they have more to offer than headline grabbing soundbites, and can be trusted with the economy again,

No longer any use to me, but a fantastic and fair policy.

True, not taxpayers fault. Then why taxpayers subsidy child benefits, esp when cap removed? it's not their fault that people decided to have more children then they can feed.

Equally, taxpayer will subsidy non working, or low paid or working part time single mum, not necessarily asking about feckless father.

Why then mid earning single mum is denied the same treatment?

Also don't you find this ironic that high earners pay for childcare for everyone else via their taxes but can't have it for themselves?

Most people earn nothing near £100k so who are we helping with this? I'd rather they increased support for lower income families who genuinely can't afford childcare rather than subsidising those who have the money but don't want to part with it.

what I do think needs pushing is more help with wraparound and holiday childcare. this would be a massive help to people it can cost a fortune

I think this is a really good point. The higher earning parents I know are not choosing part time work/ turning down promotions when their children are small because of childcare costs, they’re doing it because of the demands of small children. I do think parents of school aged children could do with more support though. Legislating for more flexible/ at home working would help too. I think it’s a good policy area to be looking at, but I don’t think this is the most pragmatic solution - especially not with a £700 million price tag.

Why then mid earning single mum is denied the same treatment?

Because she’s not mid earning, she’s in the top 4% at £100k.

Recent posts continue to make it clear that not everyone understands the policy already provides the free childcare hours to households on well over 100k, just distributed differently. It's not an income cap. It's interesting how often people presume it is.

Why do you think the taxpayer subsides the low paid or non paid rather than a relatively higher earners? 🤔 Is it perhaps so the children can eat?

I don’t think that anyone disputes that if you live in a cheaper part of the country with lower housing costs then 100k is a very healthy salary that goes along way. But if you live in eg London as a single parent and have to rent and childcare is £100 per day per child it isn’t a great salary anymore, and the tax and benefit system doesn’t account for the huge variety in regional cost of living. Now if it is two earners on 99k each with 20k shoved into their pension and mummy daddy fronted a deposit for a house at 50 per cent and their mortgage is manageable, nobody is saying they can’t afford their childcare. Oh hang on a minute they get the free hours! So it’s not fair anyway!
In a society where the society expects both parents to work and the whole of society (pension mortgages cost of living) is set up along that - it’s only fair that that society provides a nationalised and regulated professional childcare system with good funding to invest in the next generation. And if you are serious about getting people into work it’s a must.
I think there is even more of an argument for a national early years/nursery system than there is for national care. We have seen the delays and issues in young children, it’s really important the State starts supporting families more.

I would advocate claiming back all payments made to subsidise working (universal credit, child care etc) out of the profits from businesses that make large profits while the taxpayers are subsidising.them.

Those being underpaid to make thos happen should be supported as the system is failing them.

Those earning over the national average, should not need to be subsidised by taxpayers at all.

Delays in young children are not going to occur because their well paid professional parent is only working part time rather than full time though. Many children will very much benefit from spending more time with a parent than nursery.

Well, to pay for this, they also talking about putting back the two child benefit cap, cutting the sickness benefit component of UC, and massively reducing the DLA/PIP criteria for disability benefits.

So, I guess it will depend on the individual circumstances of parents, as to whether they agree with this. 🤷‍♀️

I think the conservatives were wrong to introduce it in the first place. But this is a clear vote loser. Do they have any understanding at all of how much people are struggling?

Apparently not.

They want to give free childcare to households where at least one parent is earning over £100k and now we're being told that they want to cut the inheritance tax that is only paid by the wealthiest 5% of estates.

I don't actually agree with the cliff edge at £100k and I don't think it's particularly fair, but for the Tories to be promising high profile policies that only help the very richest in our society, in the midst of a cost of living crisis...well, it just seems a bit tone deaf.

What next? Scrap the VAT on private school fees?

The dependency on the state is probably getting too high for tax changes that positively hit behaviour rather than the opposite.