Child benefit cut unenforceable

[mcquade]

It has emerged that the scrapping of child benefit for upper rate taxpayers is unenforceable and the Treasury is in a flap about, having failed to consult civil servants before making its headline-grabbing announcement. Yet another mess. Full story here:

blogs.wsj.com/iainmartin/2010/10/28/child-benefit-cut-unenforceable-treasury-in-a-flap/?mod=rss_WSJBlog&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

so, by 2013 a lot more people will be losing the ChBen? I can't see a reason for not having it as part of a universal credit tbh.

Really tho, people in work shouldn't actually need benefits. We should as a country address minimum wage and cost of living rather than top up money whoich causes resentment.

I don't think increasing the minimum wage would help much. Families need help even if they are on a decent wage.

£15k for a 22 year old in a cheaper area of the country probably means he can have quite a nice lifestyle. £15k for a family of 4 in the south east means poverty.

Can't honestly see what the problem is. For new claimants they just make it a requirement of claiming that you declare your own and your partner's NINO. For existing claimants write giving 3 months notice that this info is required and claim will end if it isn't supplied. Sorted.

because not everyone has children grumpy, it is a benefit for children and paid to women in most instances. why should single men with no dependents (or one's they actually pay for anyway) get the same?

missed - you change jobs all the time, you'd have to set up a system whereby you checked every tax year and could prove whether your husband had moved out, prove someone had had someone move in etc. not that simple. CB is paid for a long time during which circumstances frequently change.

I thought that too missed. Perhaps the issue is because the CB is paid to one of the parents and not to the family. Presumably if I received a form asking for dh's NI number or asking if he is a higher rate tax payer, I could just plead ignorance. But then again I suppose they could just say provide the information or your benefit ceases.

WallowsInflies you are right the system would have to check everyones details every tax year and we know how critical the government have been in relation to the tax credit scheme which works on the same principle.

Going back a few years ago dh used to receive a bonus which took him just over the 40% bracket, the bonus wasn't guaranteed so if he was asked if he was a higher rate taxpayer the answer would have been "Don't know yet".

This is going to be so complicated that it will make the system for administering tax credits look like childs play.

Without a doubt they will be cutting CB for everyone and this is their way of doing it. The sneaky bastards.

They could look at electoral registers for a start, or even do address searches on the HMRC database and match up those living there. not too hard!

No, not hard as such, but costly. There will be costs associated with linking databases in this way and more costs associated with then doing the number-crunching to work out who's entitled and who isn't. Then add sending all the letters out to those who aren't entitled and changing tax records etc for the married couples clawback thing (which is completely ridiculous anyway and penalises single parents).

Given that they obv didn't want to assess joint household income in the first place and were happy to let households with two £40K earners claim CB whereas household with one earner with a £50K salary could not, I think we can assume those costs are sufficiently large as to make the whole thing unworkable or unprofitable.

This is very interesting and represents exactly the problem I had with this policy (aside from being £2500 per annum worse off) - why does the government assume MY finances are dependant on dh?

But surely the whole point of it was that it was supposed to be simple, quick and easy to set up? That was why they were going to let the anomalies through? "We know it's unfair on single parents, but we don't want to overcomplicate things".

Whatever they do with CB in 2013, it seems very unlikely that it is going to be what they announced in 2010.

Well they seem to manage to eek out the benefit cheats as it is, or so they reckon. They just need to waste all the money they will save by getting investigators to sit outside your mock tudor mansions, tracking the HRT payers, on the tube, then bingo. Welcome to the world of means tested benefits. Or your neighbours might grass you up and they can claim £50 for it.

have not read all the posts here, I was just quiety laughing at the government again, for yet another cock up. then i just found this...www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/8095513/Fines-to-penalise-non-disclosure-of-child-benefit.html

'The Treasury last night confirmed that undisclosed earnings would result in "penalties" under new legislation requiring parents to come forward to be stripped of the payments, worth nearly £2,500 a year for a family with three children'.

'It is not yet clear how the fines will work because child benefit is paid directly to mothers, who are not required to share details of their personal finances with their partners'!.

seems they are thinking about 'punishments' before thinking about the actual poiciy? i cannot beleive anyone has any faith in these thickwits.

Hang on ... if a woman is a HRT payer but her partner is not can the man claim the CB and the woman tick an honesty box??

Presumably the 'new legislation' will include the abandonment of the principle that the child benefit goes to the mother. Or perhaps a return to the days when a wife's income was treated as the husband's?

What if NOBODY returned the forms (a collective rebellion). How would the system cope with fining everyone?

I think it's just going to penalise the HRT taxpayers who fill out tax returns because (with an honesty box) you would actively have to lie about it - even if you are not the claimant, if you live with the parent of your children you would have a hard time claiming to be ignorant of child benefit, esp after all this furore. Other HRT payers not on SA will be impossible to check (in the sense of living with CB claimants) but I think they will introduce some measure to reduce it for all anyway befoe 2013.
wallows sorry, really didn't understand your point.

wallowsinflies, they are not 'targetting' the pooer with tax credits. yes they are giving them an extra £30 but they are taking 10% away in working tax credits-a loss which is far greater than their gain.

'They could look at electoral registers for a start, or even do address searches on the HMRC database and match up those living there. not too hard!'

if you could see the state of a lot of central government databases you would not think this.

according to the guardian it says;

"Those who are taxed through the pay-as-you-earn system would be asked to declare the benefit, putting them in a different tax code. The benefit would be recouped in the following tax year".

if it is that straight forward why not a code for higher earning single parents? that would solve the problem of a couple earning more but still getting it, the same goes for those who are not married but do co-habit. however, they point blank to refuse to solve this, they point blank don't care about equality and point blank don't care about how people live if it is 'not their way' [in other words and to use Cammerons words; "done the right thing"].

it is all rubbish. there is no saving incentive here, the cost of this will be huge. they are just trying to make us do what they want us to do/live like they want us to live.

i wonder if mr.gove has anymore friends he could pay to work it all out for them ?

I don't understand the assumption that single parents are automatically penalised more than couples. Is it because of child care costs? On the assumption that all HRTaxpayers have a SAHM? That's weird to think that. I work p/t so have to pay for childcare. DH is HRT payer, but our joint income would be less than someone in the city earning, eg £65k. So should I give up work?

it is couple with a stay at home partner and single parents-both will loose out.

Pls explain how that works? Child care for a HRT single parent (assuming no family help) but surely it's all dependent on salary? After 45k or whatever, a couple with childcare costs taking home 50k will be worse off than a couple with a SAHM earning 60k?

what i am saying is that say a single mum earns just above the limit and gets no child benefit [neither does the working ptnr of a sahm], but if there is a family whos combined income is more than the last 2 families [both incomes less than the limit, but put together is more] then they still get child benefit. is that what you mean?

'They could look at electoral registers for a start, or even do address searches on the HMRC database and match up those living there. not too hard!'

so if I was a single mum with my higher rate tax payer brother lodging with me they would put him down as the father of my children?