to be shocked, that the goverment do not pay towards chilcare costs for everyone?

[spottyoldzebra]

well they should stop going on about getting mothers back to work then.

Blue shoes if you look at the qualifiying figures you'll see how wrong you are in assuming there is any opportunity for a parent qualifying for the childcare element ie help towards childcare paying that money back in tax.
The less you earn the more you are entitled to which is why so many parents on £25k a year feel hard done by, on that amount you'd earn too much to receive any help and get enough to loose a decent amount to tax every year.

They should bring back tax allowences which were straight forward to administer and less open to fraud and fair.

katieDD, I too earn too much for tax credits etc. I understand your point about earning less entitles you to more. More does the amount given in tax credit ever exceed the amount of tax that parent/household would pay?

Hell yes !!!

Some people get more a week in tax credits than my husband earnt in a £60k a year job after tax and NI.
If the amount of children and the hours worked are combined well enough you could end up with £450 a week in your pocket on top of £12,000 a year wages, I have seen that done. And you only have to play around with www.entitltedto.co.uk to see for yourself.
People have been paid to go to work basically, hence why we are in so much trouble now the white collar redundancies are starting because unemployment has been hidden for so long.

Hell yes !!!

Some people get more a week in tax credits than my husband earnt in a £60k a year job after tax and NI.
If the amount of children and the hours worked are combined well enough you could end up with £450 a week in your pocket on top of £12,000 a year wages, I have seen that done. And you only have to play around with www.entitltedto.co.uk to see for yourself.
People have been paid to go to work basically, hence why we are in so much trouble now the white collar redundancies are starting because unemployment has been hidden for so long.

Katiedd, the tax credit system is counterintuitive and frankly nuts then, plus the enormous cost of administering it, mistakes and all.

I would be in favour of dismantling it and just going for a simple tax deduction system. Make the cost of childcare tax deductible. That way, no one ever gets paid to go to work. I am sure there must be a socio-economic rationale why the tax credit system is structured in this illogical way - along the lines of benefits almost.

The problem with the tax and benefits system is that it is so labyrinthine. Every year it gets tinkered with a little bit, and that creates perverse incentives and loopholes as well as the intended effect (whatever that might be). It is not designed to produce the perverse effects, but in essence it is not really designed at all. The problem is that it almost impossible to design a tax system that does not have points at which people lose out or aspects open to abuse, and there would need to be a great deal of political consensus to completely scrap it and introduce something new. It is true that something much simpler would be cheaper to administer, and at least the flaws would be more transparent.

The principle that it is a good idea to get people into work is to do with more than the immediate effects on the public purse though. The trouble is that if you are out of the job market for too long, or if you never entered it it gets progressively harder to work at all but the most menial tasks (and even that is hard, because understandably employers want references, and if there is a choice will choose the person with a good work history over the person with none). There are also the issues of the non-working household being perpetuated through generations. Finally I think we still as a nation have quite a protestant work ethic, that working hard is the only way to improve your lot in life. I'm not sure whether if I thought that my only prospect was a dead end job for the rest of my life I would not have welcomed the opportunity to stop for a few years. As someone with a career however, I expect that every few years I will progress to something better paid and more interesting, so ensuring that continues to happen is much more important to me.

Excellent points from nooka.
Someone made the point earlier - 'You don't expect someone to be a lawyer and a doctor, so why expect them to be a lawyer and a mother'. What a strange way of looking at it!!

I don't consider being a mother as being a 'job'. Being a mother is a central part of my life and who I am, not a 'job'. Just as my husband is a father, who happens to have a profession. Are you seriously suggesting that once you are a parent you cease to be or do anything else??

I think what a few posters, including twinklemegan, need to get their heads around is the idea that parents who work outside the home(ie the majority of parents) are still parents and are still responsible for raising their children. We do not pay for someone else to 'raise' or 'parent' our children. I paid for my children to have a nursery experience that was exceptional, and which enabled me to continue in my career. This complemented the experiences my children had with me at home, and with their father at home, and indeed all the other experiences they had. It wasn't an alternative!

If you feel that children of a certain age need to be at home with one parent (and the age thing is quite arbitrary by the way - many people seem to see the pre-school years as holding special significance, but in fact, school starting age is different all over the world) then fine. Be honest with yourself that you are staying at home because you want to. Don't try to draw the conclusion that it will be 'better' for your children and would therefore be 'better' for everyone else's children. It's utter nonsense, and the hundreds of thousands of perfectly well adjusted, clever and capable children of hundreds of thousands of working parents are evidence of that.

I'm pleased to see the penny has dropped about how tax credits work. KatieDD obviously explained it better than me (just checking in, as typically I can't stay away).

If you need further proof, I have indeed gone away and done some hard research as I don't like being accused of talking out of the proverbial. I do actually know a bit of what I'm talking about, having been embroiled in the system for many years.

Please take the time to look at these figures:

Single parent on benefits

Total entitlements £12307.79
Net cost to tax paeer £12307.79 per annum

__

Single parent earning £210 a week (approx minimum wage for 35 hours), assuming average childcare costs of £160 a week

Total gross earnings £10920
Total entitlements £14167.12
Total tax paid £1580.80

Net income £23506.32
Net cost to tax payer £12586.32 per annum

The entitlement for a couple earning the first figure with one parent at home is £7200.08 - basically the same but minus the childcare costs.

_

Please compare the two figures and then try to tell me I was talking rubbish before.

I will be very disappointed if nobody comes back to me about this. I have put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. Over to you.

I am sorry if I have riled anyone with my comments about working parents and childcare. My views on full time childcare have appeared stronger than they are because I have answered questions to defend remarks made in the course of a wider argument. I am a full time WOHM and I am simply being honest about how I feel about my own role - perhaps I'm too hard on myself. But I know who has the easier life, and it isn't DH.

I think people get confused because it is called 'tax credits', which implies that it is a credit against tax paid.

Like any other benefit, it is a redistributive system. It merely has a wider qualifying population.

For example, my DH pays £46 tax per week, but we get tax credits of £80 per week. The government is redistributing some of taxpayers money to us as a family because our income is less than some others. Another family may pay £80 tax per week and only receive £46 in tax credits.

And as I stated before, the system is quite odd, because for my 17 hours per week temporary job, we as a family benefit financially overall by £23.45 per week, because everything else is lost in reductions in housing benefit and tax credits.

I would suspect that the assumption is that the minimum wage is just that. A minimum. You would have to earn only a marginal amount over the minimum wage or a couple of hours extra a week (or 287.53 a year) to change that balance. If the numbers are realistic it also shows how incredibly generous the system is to those with low incomes.

But I think the main argument is that for about the same amount of money from the tax payer, individuals are brought into the workplace and add to the nations productivity. The issue about childcare is a matter of debate between those who think it is a bad idea for mums to work, who would say that the money would be better spent on benefits, and those who think childcare is fine so long as it is good, and that there are additional benefits to bringing the parent into the workplace (such as role modeling, reducing social isolation, recirculating money, and the long term financial prospects of the family).

In any case according to current plans no parent will be forced to work before their child is one, which is equivalent to the most generous maternity leave.

I am now clear on how tax 'credits' operate. They are not credits on tax at all. I now see it as a form of payment to encourage people on low income to work. Still not entirely comfortable with the whole rationale for tax credits or the way it is administered but it is there.

I would agree with nooka's analysis about tax credits v. benefits.

Using twinkle's example below, for the same amount of tax ie £12000+, tax credits gets one lone parent back into work, but single parent benefits just enables that lone parent to stay at home.

Between the two, I would favour having that lone parent back into work. I agree with nooka about the "role modeling, reducing social isolation, recirculating money, and the long term financial prospects of the family" which nooka describes, all of which are extremely important to break the cycle of benefits and poverty.

This has been said by other posters earlier. Benefits are a form of safety net. Nobody should be entitled to stay at home if they could be in work and earn the same amount (using a tax credit top up if necessary for those around minimum wage). Work is a springboard for better things and for aspirations within the family. As a society, we should embrace the work ethic.

lou031205 - yes you might ONLY be £23.45 better off, but for a start, that's better than a poke in the eye and 2nd you are supporting yourself, god forbid.

A lot people are in for a huge bloody shock if Labour actually does what it says for once with regards to work for benefits.

"lou031205 - yes you might ONLY be £23.45 better off, but for a start, that's better than a poke in the eye and 2nd you are supporting yourself, god forbid."

Forgive me KatieDD, but explain to me why it is acceptable that a woman with a higher earning DH is a SAHM but not one with a lower earning DH?

Also, why is it acceptable to claim Tax credits if household income is £45000 but it turns into a scroungers benefit if income is only £18000?

The government determines who is 'worthy' for these benefits. If someone qualifies fairly and squarely, especially if they are working, how dare people on higher incomes decide that they are then scrounging?

For every person on a high wage there will be countless others who are on a much lower wage. FACT.

Why is acceptable ? Because her DH can support her, if yours can't then you picked the wrong guy if staying at home is important to you above everything else.

I don't think there is anything wrong with claiming a benefit that you need, and using the system in the way it was intended to be used. In that context I think it is the higher earning couple that are taking what they don't really need. I think it is a good thing that the government has made the system so that those who need assistance have sources available to them (btw I think the reason that they are called credits is PR, to encourage those who would feel bad about receiving a benefit to feel fine about a credit, and for the government to look better on the political front). Redistribution makes a fairer society, and that is a good thing. But the risk is that people get trapped into dependancy (this is the non earning benefits receivers) which is why the marginal rates of pay vs benefits is so important. Personally I think being totally dependent on your partner is also a bad thing, which is why I don't think being a SAHP without a (realistic) plan for returning to work is a good idea.

KatieDD in response, my husband does support my family. The GOVERNMENT deem that by doing so, we are entitled to assistance in the form of tax credits and housing benefit. I return to my former question, which is essentially

"What gives you the right to decide that it is not acceptable for us to claim the benefits that the government states that we are entitled to?"

My DH is working full-time. I am working full-time as a mother and part-time outside the home, although only temporarily unless the position is extended. I have deliberately chosen a job that does not require us to use childcare, which would be partly funded by tax credits also.

Well I take it that the remarks about me talking rubbish wrt to tax credits/benefits are withdrawn, even if it hasn't been said explicitly. For the sake of completeness, I should have mentioned that in my examples I assumed rent of £100 a week and council tax of £25 a week and the entitlements include HB and CTB.

I used the minimum wage as an example because that is the type of job which the parents being targeted are likely to be doing. But be assured that you really don't have to move a huge amount up the scale from the minimum wage before you start paying a whole lot more in tax than you receive in tax credit. Hence the situation that we as a family are no better off financially than we would be if I worked in Tesco rather than having a professional job.

The one problem with dismantling the tax credit system and replacing it with tax reductions and tax deductable childcare, as suggested below, is that for many people full time childcare would take up the vast majority of their earnings. For a single parent that is clearly an unsustainable position. I think people on low incomes should receive considerable help with childcare, as they do, if they are being "encouraged" back to work. It is the only way it can possibly be viable. The issue I have is the other £4000 odd of tax credits that they receive purely for going out to work. That is excessive IMO. But it also very nicely demonstrates my first argument on this thread that there are many other factors involved in single parents being able to go out to work - financial viability is very clearly not one of them.

Sadly I see the argument hasn't moved on very much wrt SAHPs. I think people are having difficulty in separating their own motiviations for having two parents work from the actual (minimal) cost to them as taxpayers if only one parent in a family works. They will continue to resent the few hundred pounds a year that our families receive in extra tax credit, despite the fact that we would otherwise cost them much more money in childcare costs!

At then end of the day if you're entitled to something you should claim it because you'd be a fool not to, nobody would blame you for that at all. But you have to understand that you are being subsidised by a lot of people who may not like that. And may vote for another party who will do things differently.
I'd still rather you had the money than the bankers though.

'The one problem with dismantling the tax credit system and replacing it with tax reductions and tax deductable childcare, as suggested below, is that for many people full time childcare would take up the vast majority of their earnings. For a single parent that is clearly an unsustainable position. '

• You see, again, the issue many people will have with this argument, is that there seems to be an underlying assumption that once parents decide to split, they can abandon financial responsibility for their children. For example, let's suppose'Parents A' earn 20k each. Parents B also earn 20k each. Parents A decide to separate, while Parents B remain together. There is no logical reason why Parents A cannot continue to earn just as much, so in theory, each couple can equally afford (or not afford) childcare! Childcare costs should be seen as a shared responsibility - it isn't up to either the mother or father to pay, but both of them. The difference, of course, is that a split couple will expect to be able to run two homes as well. And sometimes, they expect to be able to do that without seriously expecting to downsize! I have at least two friends who have split with their partners and have expected to continue to maintain the same standard of living, which seems bizarre!

The bottom line is - you may decide you don't want to live with your partner any more, but you don't divorce your children.

I have in mind single parents who don't have a partner to support them. I'm talking about widows/widowers, women whose partners are in prison (not sure if different rules apply there anyway), the many women who get nothing from their ex's, etc.

In my own position, I'm thinking about what if something happened to DH - he is older than me and not in great health. We've planned as much as we can, but the bottom line is that without him to look after DS and without help from tax credits, I would be quite likely be forced to give up my job.

Sorry that reads all wrong. I mean, of course, single parents who don't have an ex partner to support them.

Single parents who are single in the sense that they are the only living partner are, I agree, in a different position.

But this is only a tiny minority of the 'single' parents we're hearing about on this thread. In most cases, one partner is not dead, or in prison, they are just living separately. This does not affect the ability of either partner to work, and it certainly shouldn;t mean that they can abdicate financial responsibility for their kids.

My DH and I both work full time. Childcare costs have always been a joint responsibility. It makes bugger all difference if they technically come out of my earnings, or DH's, because the whole point is that the children are ours. If we decide to separate, why should either of us assume that we can stop working and be funded by the tax payer?

I would agree with all of that.

KatieDD (and anyone else who thinks they're subsiding me and DH) - just to be clear on this one. If DH also worked full time, earning the same as me, we would be entitled to twice as much tax credit as we get now. So unless people are bemoaning the loss of tax from DH I don't see the problem. And they might as well berate me as well for not reaching my full earning, and therefore, taxation potential. Where does it end?

Currently DH and I are in a pretty good position for the taxpayer and just about the worst for us. DH works, therefore we pay childcare. But he works insufficient hours to qualify for extra tax credit, and insufficient hours to qualify for help with childcare costs. So we lose out on both counts - we are most certainly not taking money from the taxpayer to enable DH to be at home.