Child Benefit Cuts to over 43,000 salaries

[kirsty1055]

Can't understand what the problem is???!!! 43,000 each month amounts to over £3,000 per month??? We'd happily swap our salary with someone earning 43,000...my husband works 40 hours a week and has to work over christmas and his salary is 12,000!!!! We have 3 children. I'm angry that ppl with the high income can moan about it when my husband is actually contributing towards them receiving it???!!!

Alicatte - I think (without being deliberately insulting, really) that you are being rather naive about this government. Nothing in their rhetoric suggested that they would be different.

U - everything changes,

Labour, New Labour, New Generation Labour.

One Nation Conservatism, Thatcherism, ???

Change is possible.

I don't take any insult and I think you made some good points.

PS having said that I don't, obviously, think all change is well thought out or good.

Change is possible.
Personally (a lifelong left-winger) I thought NewLab did us a disservice, but their investment in the next generations was completely fantastic. We will now never know if it would have worked. It's too late.
I blame Clegg

I blame Thatcher and Clegg

lol at joining mumsnet just to post yet another thread about this!

When does all this take effect?

I totally agree and sympathise with wubbly bubbly & 1catherine, they have hit the nail on the head!

I see your point Kirsty, I think it does depend on the area where u live though and now we know that joint income families over this amount will still receive CB stinks...big time! That part does not make it fair...makes u wonder what is next to happen.

We will lose CB. I am very happy about this and have been putting ours into a UK charity since the dc were born as we don't strictly need it. Our neighbours earn around £40K each and will get it. That's crazy. Yes, we live in the South East and it is ridiculously expensive, but they bought when we did, before the current boom, and have one child at a state school. Go figure. Higher taxes on them and us, based on a collective household income, would make more sense than this, though as I say I am in principle opposed to CB going to all, regardless of income.

I am a socialist, I believe in the welfare state but we can only fund a welfare state properly if we get rid of things like CB for higher earners. We can't afford to have a symbolic universal payment like this, not if we want to provide really good medical care and people are living longer. The welfare state was set up by the Liberals in the early 20th century and then massively extended by Labour in the 1940s. Both governments based their schemes on much shorter life expectancy and much poorer survival rates in many illnesses than we have today. We simply canot afford to pay for what we now wish to have unless we do some more means testing and/or raise taxes.

I do belive the Tories are trying to break up the welfare state without saying so, but what I think is more worrying than CB is what they're doing to the NHS and to education. We ALL benefit from the NHS and education, even if we don't have children, or claim benefits. I think we have become very divorced from what these services actually mean to us and take them for granted. If more people were reminded of what they actually get for their taxes, we might collectively be more worried about the welfare state being dismantled as we speak.

Having said all of that, this controversy has exposed GO and DC for the light weights they really are: how could they have got this so wrong?

On the chid benifit situation - and the cut on building school for the future, university fees planned (10k) ( why to they encourage children to want to apply) and all the other cuts the wealthy MPs will make... we as a nation and as a family need to rise up and make our voice heard...

we need to a organise a rally to parliment and demand a fairer way.. a family rally.... the banker are still getting their bonuses!!!

how do we a organise a march, freindly rally?

who would agree we need to make a stand?

I think it is unfair the joint/single earner anomaly. I think it is especially unfair to single parents earning just over that. i also think that even as a high rate taxpayer you have relied on some money which is now going to be taken away. Alot of people in that tax bracket don't have alot of spare cash.

PARENTS FOR FAIR CHILD BENEFIT CUTS (FACEBOOK)
We are planning action with other interested groups.

Do you accept that cuts need to be made but believe that the current proposals are implemented incorrectly?

From 2013 you can have a household income of £80,000 and still recieve child benefit, but lose it with a household income of £44,000.

This unduly penalises certain groups such as parents at home with children and families with ill or disabled children to name just a few.

Even if you earn under the threshold now, if your pay increases in the future you may well be affected and may even be worse off.

Demand a fair system that recognises household income rather than individual tax bands.

I hadn't heard about the university fee increase until Lizard mentioned it (I googled it) and I am worried what this government are trying to do to us. Are they trying to put the working class people "back in their place". I feel so lucky that I managed to finish university while fees were only £1000 a year but I'm deeply upset to realize that if university fees go up then I won't be able to afford to send my children to university. Making my generation of my family the only generation to have access to university. This is a step backwards.

This doesn't feel like a spending review, this feels like an attempt to widen the class divide.

I agree with OonaghBhuna above about being angry. It is the sloppiness with which this measure has been announced and the claim that there is no way it could be means tested. The child tax credit database exists and all they need to do is match it against the child benefit database (which incidentally should be the same group of people i.e families with children). It should take no more than seconds. Ask any database professional and they will confirm this.
I agree that child benefit could be removed from well off families and but this money should be used to support even more the not so well off families who have low incomes and lots of children.

Instead the government should tax the better off households who do not have children living at home, took or were given early retirement (sometimes at 50!) are claiming high occupational pensions but are still working and earning high incomes (and taking jobs that the young can not find), have benefited from the housing booms and have huge property assets and high disposable incomes. I see people like them all around me and I feel angry that child benefit will be taken from us (although we can live without it) and they are not affected in any way at the moment.

catherine - we too are deeply worried - i think the post graduate tax on the higher earners proposed is madness - its these people who normally need a degree and benefit the country most - not the person with a degree working in a lowly paid callcentre.

I think you will find this is a lib dem proposal - and they are trully loopy.

Catherine1 - where are these part time jobs of which you speak?
Do they provide childcare?

I'm a SAHM mum at the moment, I have three children under 6, no chance of getting the usual casual reporting shifts due to recession, nursery fees are sky high and the council has taken away partnership funding for pre schoolers in private nursery anyway. Add to that the fact ghat I cannot get DD3 into a cheaper local authority nursery because she would have to be on the at risk register to even get a place, it's better I stay at home for a bit.

Luckily, DP wi no longer be a higher rate tax payer next year, due to the loss of some contracts, so we will retain our child benefit.

This is the best news, no way should people get paid for having babies, particularly those in the middle class.

No more capucinno money for yummy mummies....

I know, those middle class, tax paying, bastards.

I am not talking about people on lower wages or toilet cleaners!

I am talking about those mums who spend their entire day sitting in expensive coffee shops, slurping lattes and discussing which part of Tuscany they should buy their holiday home.

These people do not deserve anything from the benefits system if their husbands are earning almost twice the average wage.

Benefits should be for nappies and school clothes, not piano lessons for Tarquin!

I am a SAHM and I drink cappuccinos a couple of times a week and am still entitled to CB. We are not wealthy but do ok.

What could I do to make you feel better about my lifestyle?

'The child tax credit database exists and all they need to do is match it against the child benefit database (which incidentally should be the same group of people i.e families with children)' No, it's not; you are assuming as does every one else, that everyone with kids gets tax credits - they do not.

But the system that could match up household incomes is in place even if the hgher income earners are not on it.

And anyway a lot of them might once have claimed CTC when the household income was less (maybe?)