Say no to proposed tax on child maintenance

[Jmum85]

Some of you will already know that the Gvnt is currently consulting on its proposal to charge parents for the use of the Child Support Agency (CSA). This means that it will deduct up to 12% from the monthly child maintenance payment that you currently receive if you continue to use their service. This means an average of £24.00 will be deducted directly from you child(ren)s maintenance each and every month.

You can read the Gvnts consultation paper and respond directly at
www.dwp.gov.uk/consultations/2011/strengthening-families.shtml

You can say NO to a tax on child maintenance by signing an online petition at

www.ipetitions.com/petition/taxingkids/
Please sign the petition and encourage others to sign too!

I think there should be a fee with the CSA.

I don't know if the CSA is manned by incompetents/people who don't care or if the system is just so dire and crap it is un-manageable.

When a couple separate then the standard should be the CSA guidelines (on the website) from this point. I am not arguing if they are fair amounts or not just that they are a guideline. Of course the couple can agree other amounts they are both happy with.

Ok sorry for using man as NRP and woman as the one with the children. I know it is not always the case but don't take it as sexist.

If a man doesn't pay up and the woman has no choice but to go to the CSA there should be a cost. This services doesn't come for free and all the people who work there have to be paid plus all the other costs involved.

If a man deliberately makes himself unemployed to get out of paying then the CSA should calculate his maintenance based on what he was earning and the woman should get the 15/20% out of his JSA/IB etc BEFORE he gets any. If there is not enough or none left over he can accrue the rest of the amount until he goes back to work.

If a man/company collude to pay him minimum wage then the CSA should look at his previous wage and the industry standard (which ever is the higher) and pay the woman based on this. The company should be fined for IMO fraudulent behaviour.

If a man is on a commission based job or driving around in a ferrari, living in a massive house and having holidays then he has some means of support and this should be taken into account in order to pay the woman.

Any case where a RP has to take a NRP to the CSA because they are not paying then the NRP should have to pay the costs of the case. Sort of like based on an average office persons salary plus a litte extra per hour for calls/overheads etc. Say £10/hour?

This shoud be OVER and ABOVE what the RP gets as maintenance.

The longer someone takes to pay up the higher the costs to encourage them to sort it out.

There is no point a woman taking a man through the CSA if she is getting the website guideline and if she does it just to get more (not going to happen if he is fair and paying) then she should incur the fee.

If there is a genuine concern on the man's part about who is the father they can get a DNA done private (or through the CSA if cheaper). If the child is not his the woman should pay the fee if it is he should pay the fee.

The CSA needs real teeth to do these things. It needs proper enforceable powers and the shoddy service completely overhauled.

You don't (often) hear of secret/top secret files going missing. A similar system of tracking CSA cases needs to be implemented.

Of course this is a really simplistic look at a very complex and problematic system.

The main aims are that maintenance should be payable as soon as a couple split to provide for the children and that selfish people are not encouraged or able to not pay.

Wow that is long! Sorry

bookmarking... I'm not letting this one fade away .

Look basically this government (or any government really) doesn't believe that men should financially support their children unless they actually live with them.

That's the bottom line.

3/5 of non-resident parents (90% of whom are men) do not pay a single penny of maintenance. Of the minority who do, most of the payments are at derisory levels, such as a fiver a week.

The CSA has never worked. OK in a minority of cases it has performed brilliantly but the results are in the numbers - the majority of non resident parents still pay nothing or peanuts for their children's support.

Basically the government is saying that it is on the side of deadbeat dads not hardworking responsible mothers. So better make sure you keep your husbands happy women, because we will punish you and your children if you don't.

xales, you have put a lot of thought into it all! interesting ideas.
herbex and softkitty, i think you are both probably right there.

whereas something may need to be done to make the csa work better for many people i don't think charging the NRP or RP will work, making people pay unaffordable amounts of cash will not work.

making the RP pay, will result in many cases, just not bothering. i know in my case that in the past, if i wasn't in reciept of maintenance from my ex, i was entitled to housing benefit. so i wonder what the saving would be there-if any? so in many cases, getting the maintenance through the csa saves money from other areas of the system. for me, the csa route was straight forward and i have not had to speak them for ages and ages. all that happens is that his employer sends a bank cheque thing to the csa bank and their computers put it into mine. it probably only takes a few minutes to do!

charging NRP's an hourly rate or huge amounts may well drive those NRP's further away from the very people the government is intending them to help. charging will not encourage better relationships between people, it will worsen their relationships. for most people it is simply impossible to reason/disscuss with eachother hence having to use the csa etc. the NRP will resent [even more in my case] the RP [for having to pay more] and this will not be good for anyone involved in the family.

i think a big problem with separating families is lack of affordable legal advice. with legal aid being cut for familly work like this, this will worsen. another problem is the rights of married women compared to the rights of co-habiting women. while, it is not illegal to have children out of wedlock [and thank goodness], there a few legal rights that you do have upon separatation if you were co-habiting.

i wonder if the government charges all those self employed people to use the tax office to sort out their tax returns?

i wonder, is there a fee charged anywhere that is similar to this proposal??
i guess this is another way in which they see their 'big society privatisation' working-getting people to be more independent. the thing is, if this was never problem, then the csa would never have been set up in the first place.

At £10/hour that is 10 hours that a NRP would get the same as what the goverment is suggesting the RP pay to go to the CSA in the first place with out the % on top of that taken from both!

If people sort this themselves without going to the CSA there is no cost involved.

If a NRP insists on continuing to refuse to pay what his children are entitled to he is the one responsible for the costs rising.

If he is unreasonable enough to think the RP shouldn't have maintenance for the children he is already an arse and their communication has already broken down.

The CSA is pretty much the only option and a RP who is probably already struggling should not be the one to have to pay.

Xales - many parents are unable to sort it out themselves if they have an abusive partner.

If the CSA intend to go to my XP and ask him for more money for their service then I am quite likely to have to deal with the fall out and abuse from him. At the moment we have nothing to do with him but I daresy it wouldn't take much for him to flare up again.

That is something else that needs sorting /-: This country is way to weighted in the favour of the abusers/evaders. Senior figures in the rape system saying a woman 'probably deserved it'.

Honest decent people, the ones who should be looked after are left to rot by this country's systems.

This country is corrupt and rotten on so many levels.

over 800 signatures to date! really want to reach 1000 before I hand it in!
If anyone you know hasn't signed yet please ask them to. It has to be in before the Gvnt consultation ends on 7 April 2011.

www.ipetitions.com/petition/taxingkids

Hi

I've got about 980 signatures on the petition against these charges. I plan to hand deliver it to No 10 tomorrow afternoon and I'll email a copy to Maria Miller too. If you haven't yet signed it or if you know a few more people who will want to sign it please do so today!

P.S the Gvnt consultation ends tomorrow so if you have yet to respond to the Green paper visit

www.dwp.gov.uk/consultations/2011/strengthening-families.shtml

Xales. I think you are missing the point a bit. The problem with the CSA is not that they don't have the power. They just seem completely incapable of organising themselves into an effective force.

So for example, a self employed person who pays himself the minimum. The CSA do have the power to look at their income based upon a lifestyle inconsistent with their declared earnings but then unlike the tax man, they just ummm, ahh a bit before later deciding their computer system crashed and have to start again!

The tax man would nail your arse to the wall then throw it in prison. Result, people tend not to mess with the taxman but deadbeat dad's congratulate themselves on how clever they are to avoid the CSA.

To now charge for such a shoddy service is frankly insulting.

Now IF the govt can turn the CSA/CMEC around into a lean mean machine who's very mention strikes fear into parents into sorting things out for themselves then I don't mind if they take a slice.

Usually I can take my custom elsewhere if I am not getting the service I want. Except in this case, they are a state monopoly so I'm buggered.

And given neither the Tories who set it up or New Labour have managed to fix it since it started, I'm not holding my breath on this one.

I wonder what the statistics are for the percentage of NRPs paying CSA who pay the minimum amount of £5p/w for all NR children?

Without wishing to make a massive genarlisation, I would bet that a fair few of those who pay the minimum amount also fall into the category of 'a**holes who won't pay unless forced to'. So these are the NRPs who are going to force the RP's hand into having to pay the £50 or £100 fee to claw back their measly £5 per week.

I may be biased, since I am one of those who gets a minimum payment and also have as a**hole who wouldn't pay, but after finding out this week that he is expecting yet another child with his new wife and being smugly told that they have decided to 'separate' for the increased benefits, I have done my maths based on the knowledge that the £5p/w taken from his benefits is equally split between ALL his children who are NR. That works out at a touch over 83p per child, per week. Of course 4/6 of that stays within his household, or rather goes back into it with the attempt at fraud, but even if they had legitimately split up, I would be currently paying £50 for the privilege of gaining a whopping £1:66 a week to come into my household. The other wife would have to do the same for her 4x83p a week so the CSA would be paid twice to take money from the same man. If I manage to find work, I will be penalised for it by having to double the amount I pay to be able to get back a tiny percentage of what is due to my kids.

At the rate of 83p per child a week, with my 2 children and assuming I am still out of work when the new system comes in, it will take over 30 weeks of CSA payments before I even start seeing any money actually coming back into the household again, rather than it just being used to pay off the application fee.

Quite aside from the fact that RP often have enough of a financial struggle day to day that they can't necessarily afford the upfront fee, even if it were deducted from future CSA payments it would be untenable. In my circumstances that would see no CSA coming in for 30 weeks. Assuming most people who receive the £5 a week are working or have partners who are, that is 20 weeks with no CSA.

Quite often those who receive the lowest payouts are those who need them the most, so are the ones least able to scrape up the application fee so yet again this is the Tories hitting those who are weakest where it hurts for their own gain.

I can't believe I missed this thread, and the petition, because I've been looking for something on this.

I'm really sorry I missed your deadline, JMum85.

It is a crap proposal.

I'd be quite happy to pay if they actually managed to get some money out of the tightfisted little shit.

Perhaps they might like to spend the money on updating their call centres so that you can actually hear them speaking on the phone without all that background noise and send their staff to elocution lessons so that I don't have to struggle to understand the various annoying regional accents Oh, and teach them to stop mumbling as well......especially the men.

All of you complaining about having to pay for this please remember this is a service. Do you expect tax payers to pick up the tab for this too???

so, garlicrisoot, shall we be charging all those people who fill out their returns and hand them into the tax office every year? maybe a small fee to schools or hospitals aswell?
Yes, the government does provide this service amongst many others. maybe, just because not everyone can see the benefit in a particular service themselves, it does not mean it should be ok to charge for it, especially children. And, at present, the parent who has money deducted does pay a small fee-so in fact there already is a charge for this 'service' as you put it.

And, by the way, I AM a tax payer [Yes, shock horror...lots of single mums work-more than married ones in fact when their children are older!] and I use the CSA, so in response to your question, my answer is yes as a life long, working full time, single mother and tax payer, I do.

Come on Lego - that's a completely different thing. We all pay tax, it's not a service. The CSA is there for when grown ups can't behave with enough responsibility or respect for each other.

I too am a taxpayer and the thought of yet more of my taxes going to pay for something like this would make me very angry.

No, it's not such a completely different thing, and as said before, just because not everyone has to use it, it doesn't mean it is not worthy!

I am afraid it really is not as simple as 'people not behaving like grown ups'. Yes, those absent parents who refuse to pay, lie about earnings etc are, as you say, not being grown up. However, what about the parent with care? What exactly are they doing wrong? How are they not acting like grown ups, when they are bringing up children on their own?

In my case, my ex and I went through mediation and it didn't work out as he refused to continue. I paid out thousands on solicitors fees [it got to the point where I could not afford to carry on] there after. Later he was arrested and charged for what he did to me. Please don't tell me that I have not 'acted like a grown up', I think I have. There is no way that I could begin to 'negotiate' with this man about money, without having a breakdown, not ever. I am not being childish and I am not alone.

Why should my children loose such a massive percentage out of their maintenance because of this? I would love to be able to afford to live without his money, and if I could I would. I would love it to be hunky-dory between my ex and me aswell, but it isn't. My ex now has a new family and can afford for his new partner to be a stay at home mum. My childrens maintenance has already gone down becuase of this and now the government want to take more away from my children. So, he already contributes less than 20% of his earnings for two children before the current proposals. How is this right?

One last point, a few years ago I found out that I was entitled to housing benefit. It was a small amount and so I didin't bother to claim it. I then worked out that I would have got a whole lot more if my ex wasn't paying maintenance. If the CSA wasn't there to sort it out, then I would be in receipt of housing benefit, which I guess would be costing the 'tax payer' a lot more. I wonder, if when they deduct their percentage out of my children's maintenance, I will once again be entitled to claim housing benefit? How is that saving money for the 'tax payer'? Just a thought.

Not really relevant to the thread but Lego - I believe that CSA is no longer taken into account when calculating housing benefit so you may want to look again at your eligibility. I know that doesn't help your argument but it might help you financially!

It's so shocking. What bastards they are (our government).

Hi. How is it fair to tax a child (which is what this means)
and not tax the people who caused the financial mess were in.
Whatever happened to no taxation without representation?

The CSA is there for when grown ups can't behave with enough responsibility or respect for each other.

Actually the CSA was set up to recoup money from absent parents when the resident parent wasn't working and claiming dole, the csa was set up to recoup the dole money from the absent parent.

It is also used as an aside by the RP who's NRP, the grown up, who can't behave with enough responsability or respect the dc they produced, it usually isn't a case of two parents not behaving but one parent who refuses to pay up.

Thomas - everyone can be taxed, children included we all get a yearly allowence though and I wonder if my dc would be able to claim the tax back?