PETITION: Child Benefit Cuts Unfair to Single-Parent, Single-Income Families

[MsByte]

Why are single parent families being targeted AGAIN?

It's not like my children are in private education, or we live in a mansion, or I drive a posh car;I work extra hours so I can afford to pay for childcare, a mortgage and bills.

Mr and Mrs Well-Off earning 43K each have a family income of 86K which is all taxed at the lower rate of 20%. Single hard-working Mothers earning 45K loses her child benefit and pay tax on anything above 44K at 40%....

FAIR Mr Cameron, I think not in fact, it's rather discrimatory.

PLEASE PLEASE sign this petition ..

CHILD BENEFIT CUTS: Stop chancellor from unfairly targeting one-parent single-income families. www.ipetitions.com/petition/unfair-childbenefit-cuts/

No I won't sign it.

oh ffs

thanks MsByte, it is fantastic of you to take time out to do this for everyones benefit. After all we can never be sure where we might end up tomorrow, next year or next month.

Changebags, are you trying to be funny? if so, it didn't work.

2shoes, why ffs? would you care to elaborate?

bump

Seriously, that's what I believed when I was younger, reach for the stars, you COULD have it all! Far from it LOL .... tears...

I've worked very hard and everything was gong well till my break up. OK it happens.

I've also got childcare issues, can't find a child minder, no after school care etc. I'm a mother of young children - I do what it takes.

I work with male colleagues who don't give a sh*t what I'm going through or even understand that I come into work in a fugue somedays cos I'm so tired - OK whatever.

What I don't take kindly to is have to deal with all this and be treated like a pariah by the govt. What I'm hearing is "get married and everything will be OK". I've never liked being told what to do and I resent having limited choices.

I have a daughter and I try and instill the confidence in her that she can do and achieve anything she wants to. She certainly doesn't need any man for that.

I understand you may not agree with my politics or wnat sign my petition - honestly that's fine by at least I have tried which is all i can do really x

signed and bump

I think this measure is basically unfair because families with almost twice as much income will still get the benefit.

The prime minister said yesterday that it is an "easy" measure because they do not have to set up a new system of means testing. But this system already exists. It is called tax credits and the household income is assessed in order to decide if a family qualifies for tax credits. This is exactly the same group of people that also receive the child benefit. Why can they not use this information?

I also agree it discriminates agaist single income households whether that is a single parent (male or female) or a family where one parent has stayed at home to look after the children and has never claimed childcare and other benefits.

Governments are making the wrong decisions. Instead of attacking families, why does it not find a way to tax more the so called "retired" group people (please do not take this to mean all retired people but a certain group only) who have high final salary occupational pensions, extra income because they are still working (and taking up the jobs that deprive the young people of opportunities), have huge property assets because they have benefited from the property booms and have huge disposable incomes? Or those high income earners (bank/building society bosses, bosses of other large companies, city high earners etc). Just increasing the tax on those people by a small margin may be enough.

We as a family have done sensible things:

• not overstretched ourselves with huge mortgages
• put money aside
• never claimed income related benefits (even when my husband was unemployed)
• always tried to provide for ourselves so that we do not become a burden to the state

We now have to pay for the excesses of other people who have over gambled (city/banks), taken more risks (having offshore accounts which the UK government has compensated them for re Iceland), taken huge mortgages and not saved a penny (they lose their job and claim benefits), those that never save not because they do not have any spare money but because they spend their spare on expensive holidays, cars etc (savers have been enjoying almost 0% interest). I can go on...

Enough!

this has probably been covered in the other threads, but does anyone know what happens with step-families? So for example, a mother with three resident children who is not a HRT, meets a man who is a HRT. If he moves in, or they get married, his step children lose £2500 per year net income?

How does the govnt know whether someone in a partnership is a HRT? They are going to rely on people ticking a box?

Just can't see how they can do it without proper means testing. And if they are going to do that, might as well just roll it up into the tax credit system.

I know this has been done to death on mn this week but honestly, I think some folk on here need to get a bit of perspective.

85% of current CB claimants will still get CB under the new proposals. So only 15% of people will lose it - these are by and large the top 15% of wealthiest families in the country. Now I KNOW that there is a theoretical chance that a widow earning 45k will be lose CB while a family of 2 earners earning 46k together will not lose it. But I have yet to see the stats of how many families this actually comprises and tbh I don't think it's that many. It's a blunt instrument but there's no other way of doing it:

1. means testing is expensive and the cost of doing it would wipe out the benefits of the cut
2. having one of you as a SAHP is an absolute luxury and not a 'right' as some people seem to think - if you are that strapped for cash on one income, and it bothers you so much maybe both of you should work

3, or alternatively give up some of your outgoings

1. 44k is by anyone's book an enormous amount of money, almost twice average earnings. Perhaps it doesn't go too far in the SE but in the rest of the country it bloody does and even in London it's a living wage
2. I am really quite at the attitude of people on here who are fundamentally very wealthy complaining that they'll be losing £20 a week as if it's their birthright to have this free money. The welfare state is for those much further down the income scale than top rate tax payers
3. it might not seem like it now but this is just Gideon giving us some very gentle foreplay before the real horror of the comprehensive spending review is unveiled on the 20th. It's going to be awful, and if you're up in arms about a little thing like removing CB for the wealthiest 15% of families then you're in for a huge shock. Best save your apoplexy and outrage to complain about all the other things coming our way.

FWIW we will be losing CB and about time too - we don't need it and it's outrageous that we've ever been entitled to it

1. The system to means test is already there, the tax credits system will have families earning under 44k in system already. Easy to administer.

1. With the cost of childcare, many women, especially those with more than one child can't afford to work.

1. Most people don't have a problem with cutting back and losing the money. What people are objecting to is the unfairness. Why should a two parent family earning 80k keep the CB? If anything, people are proposing more cuts/savings, not less!!

With the introduction of a married tax allowance they're not even going to make a net saving. It's a poorly thought out bit of policy.

I have no problem with losing my childs CB with a combined family income of £60K. However I do have a problem with families with combined income of £86K still receiving it, this is fundamentally unfair!!!!

@elportodelgato - this discriminates against single parents and single income families. In the UK, we believe in fairness and equality so we shouldn't ignore it because it only affects 15% of the population, it's actually going to impact real people and their children and if we do nothing now what next???

1. See Ewe's point above. Govt wants a 'quick return' so can't be bothered to take the time to do it properly as this will mean spending a bit of time mand money which means a longer wait to longer reap the savings. Poor excuse.
2. I'm single; losing child benefit and gaining a tax break for married couples is not enough incentive for me to get married.
3. Done.

4&5 - Average salary in the UK is 25K, therefore 2 'average' parents working have an annual income of 50K. Apparently this is not wealthy, outrageous or offensive, which it seems to be when one person earns it. If I earned 50K and it was all taxed at the basic rate, no doubt I'd be happy to give up child benefit too. It is because of preconception like this that we need proper MEANS TESTING!!! Yes, and childcare - childminders in my area if you're lucky enough to get one, average £4ph, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week is £693 per calendar month. If you've got 2 pre-school children, well, better head to the signing on office! I'm all for doing my bit - didn't make a fuss when Tax Credits was removed for higher rate tax payers, nor when Childcare vouchers were reduced for HRT, neither did I protest at the VAT increase, what irks most is that this is being sold as being 'fair' when it's so blatantly not Proper means testing and a reasonable threshold is all I'm asking for!!!!

I agree with MsByte and CJHMum and others. No one is complaining about the removal of child benefit for wealthier families. What we are saying is that all wealthy families, including those on two incomes, should lose this benefit.
(by the way, I'm also saying that other wealthy families who do not have children should also pay more taxes but we have seen no measures affecting those yet - see my point about about the "retired").
I can't understand what the fuss is about establishing the household income as I said before. Having been in the database business, as far as I can see, all they have to do is match the child tax credit database (which they are keeping) with the child benefit data to get at all the household incomes. The two databases should really cover the same two groups anyway (i.e. families with children).
It seems to me that before making blanket announcements in party conferences, they should have got someone to look at the data and know what is feasible. Does not inspire me with confidence!

I dont think it is right to remove it.

BUT, this is a very unfair way of doing it that one couple or singel parent earn £45k wont get it and a couple earning £80k+ makes me sick!

Hi, to the comments re the linking of the CTC database and the child benefit one - couple of years ago I wanted to change the bank account to which both sets of payments were made. I phoned the CTC office first, gave the new details and then said "Now to tell the child benefit office". To which he replied "Oh I can do that for you here, our systems are linked".

Now I don't know how much of a link that is but the next month, my child benefit went to the new account. So all their talk of too expensive etc is "pants" as we say in this house (in front of the kids anyway)

I have signed similar petitions but when I tried to sign this one it wanted me to make a donation in US dollars which is very suspect.

MsByte did you start this petition or were you forwarded it? I'm bit concerned now I have given my name and email address.

IDS is in the Telegraph today here explaining that child benefit will be rolled into the universal credit by 2017, with all of the anomalies ironed out and households means tested.

There is another petition to be found here:

www.gopetition.com/petition/39531.html

Sorry, I don't see single parents as a special category. All HRT will have it removed, and it stings just as much when we (4 kids), dh HRT, me p/t worker will have to fund everything with £236 less than we budgeted for. BTW, I was a single parent, and if monies tight, monies tight. If the free childcare goes next (we don't qualify til next year) I will have to give up work. The unfairness is allowing one household an income of £60k (2 at £30k) and another not (one at £55, one at £5) I suspect putting a childless millionaire in charge of the piggybank was not the best way to fairness (We are South East btw, no savings, no pension conts, just Lidl and free trips to the park).

@thedollshouse Oh dear, I did start it myself wasn't prompted to donate anything ... I did notice that there's a window in the background (actors from 'Glee' talking about wildlife) which I just ignore - did you click on that perhaps, nothing do with the petition - no donation required for signing!!!!

@earthworm - I smell a rat, remove benefit before election on the promise it will all be rectified afterwards? Is that just to placate the masses you think? They say they'll be saving 1 billion a year so basically 4billion less cost of putting things in place only to break things down again, is it really worth it?

@alexiainwales - pathetic right when you realise it all boils down to their unwilliness to tacke migrating data from one system to another and/or build suitable interfaces, but hey with their track record who can blame them?

@thedollshouse, have just seen the pop up - a bit cheeky isn't it to do that, it even redirects you to paypal !!! I notice other peope have used this site and as you didn't enter your paypal details they will have no useful information on you mmm