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.

You sound quite rabid. It’s not millionaires, it’s those earning over £100k, which is mostly people in London or other cities with staggering high tax bills and housing costs. And it’s not giving them a benefit so much as treating them in the same way that the vast majority of other working taxpayers are paid.

Does penalising those earning over £100k make sense to you? Cause it makes no sense to me.

And if it’s a £100k job located in an area of very expensive housing you’re not ‘choosing’ a very expensive lifestyle. Someone with a £100k job in the city of London isn’t anywhere near as wealthy as someone who lives in say Middlesbrough!

Um everybody over £100k stretches from that to any amount thus including millionaires. Complete madness.

And if you want ‘the numbers’ on the affordability of this policy, I can guarantee the IFS will be grinding the numbers as we type. Give them a days or so to publish and we’ll see the impartial truth.

Best part is, loads of households earning well over 100k between them will be getting this. If it were a genuine income threshold, as a cliff edge it would still be bad policy because they generally are, but there would at least be some possibility of making an income based argument. The current system doesn't even allow for that.

This is a sensible policy. I was already thinking of voting Tory next GE and this just convinces me more.

I am a single parent household who needs to keep salary sacrificing to keep my salary below £100k as I have children. I’m not interested in promotions because they won’t benefit me. More work for ostensibly less pay? Why would I bother? This policy would mean I could stop salary sacrificing so much as well as make it more attractive to climb further in my organisation. And I would pay more tax as a result. This policy would increase the number of people earning over £100k! On paper, I earn £99k…

But it’s not the wealthiest people - it equates to two individuals earning £50k each

My guess is it's quite difficult to quantify the number of people like you, so I suspect we probably don't have much good data. But what worries me is that the pool of people potentially making these decisions is likely to be increasing every year, with inflation.

This is exactly the issue, they have no idea how many people have salary sacrificed or dropped hours to be under the threshold, hence no idea how much tax is being lost because of it. It would quite possibly be cost neutral to implement as they would be getting more tax from large numbers of people who they would only be supporting with childcare costs for a short time. The extra tax would role in for their whole working lives potentially. Its a great policy.

Sounds good. It’ll help high earning women stay in work and motivated after having dc.

Of course anything like this will get detractors as below.

Far point - I was probably being unhelpfully hyperbolic using the term wealthiest. It is still well above the average household income though. I suppose I just really question this as a policy priority for right now.

Maybe I'm wrong, but in terms of actually driving growth, how many working Mums earning over £100k who have small children are turning down promotions and/ or staying part-time because they can't afford childcare, and how many are doing it because they want to be at home with their small children? I'm not against the policy on principle - but I worry this isn't proper evidence based, pragmatic policy making.

And in terms of the bigger picture, I do have niggling worries about whether the Conservatives fully understand the economic potential of either the creative industries or the green economy, given the particular agencies they're targeting for cuts.

No I would I wouldn’t support scrapping the limit. Two parents can earn £99k each, if I’m not wrong. That’s plenty!

We can’t keep handing out benefits to people.

My concerns aren't just about costs either. If it's clinicians, there's also the issue of people not picking up extra shifts when they would've done otherwise, so waiting lists are longer. This would bother me even if it turned out to be revenue neutral. We know anecdotally that this is happening as women doctors on here have posted about it, but I wonder whether we've actually been measuring it.

Not a particular source. Google "62% tax rate child care income drop graph" and look at the images. There's lots of different versions all saying the same thing - find a source your in-laws find credible ;)

No, I don't think they should. I definitely don't think they should remove my benefits in a cliff-edge manner that I pay for because I'm seemingly doing well, plus removing the personal tax allowance.

There's zero incentive. It stifles growth.

I think I've voted Conservative in most elections (have also voted Lib Dem) but honestly, regardless of how sensible this policy is, I think it's a complete own goal for the Conservatives.
It makes perfect sense to people who consider things properly, but the vast majority of voters don't, and all they will see is the Tories helping their rich mates again.
Very disappointing for me to hear as it sounded completely tone deaf. And I really like Kemi too 😭

Non-working parents using childcare are not doing it for a lifestyle choice, they are previously working parents who have recently been made redundant. If you pull your kids out of childcare you’ll lose their place at nursery/childminder, your kids will lose all sense of routine and you’ll have no childcare in place to help you seek work. So you keep it going for 2 or 3 days a week in the hope of finding a job, but it means you’re doubly squeezed because as well as losing your income you have to pay more for the childcare.

Yes, I know people who have refused promotions or cut their hours because of this. It’s a drag on productivity and aspiration.

But not a vote winner I fear

Quite the reverse. A vote loser. Only 4% of households have an individual person earning over £100k!

Why do high income families need it? If it’s scrapped it should be universal for everyone

Because they’re at work, and so need childcare.

Labour are dragging on growth and aspiration. Ik many rely on the state which makes it harder but actually promoting work is no bad thing.

I would hope that people don't only vote for things that affect them, they vote for sensible policies that raise more tax long term. Sadly that doesn't seem to be the case.

It’s not sensible though. £700 million a year on this for 4% of the population is ridiculous.