Apparently there will be a rethink on the scrapping of child benefit

[emkana]

according to the times today.

If they could look at the fact again that a household on 80k will keep it while a household on 42 will lose it then I'm all for it.

ahem - it's not just sahp who lose it! i work p/t for a charity and my childcare costs and travel are covered by my salary, dh is a hr tax payer. but we will lose it too.

We have two incomes, 1 at higher rate and 1 below. We also have three dcs so our CB is £188 every 4 weeks. I defy anybody on any income not to miss that amount of money.

The only 'fair' way they can pay CB is by means testing it. They absolutely do not have the money or indeed the political capital to do this - it will inevitably be an expensive foul up. So of course they will implement a half-assed solution that does over just the people most needing help. It's the Tories - what do you expect?

CB as a universal benefit protected sahps and cost relatively little to adminster. The Tories should never have gone near it.

And what also gets my goat is the WFA stays even though many wealthy pensioners use it as pin money on one of their many holidays. Those pensioners who live abroad in the winter still get it.

It's very clever though,a lot of Tory voters are likely to be getting WFA so they'll keep them happy. Those of us with children in the squeezed middle bracket which absolutely nobody cares about can go hang.

Under the current proposals we'd lose CB, due to me being a higher rate taxpayer, but friends who have an identical income to our household get to keep their CB because neither are higher rate. If we're deemed not to need it, why should they get it. Scrap it for household incomes of £42k+ and increase it for those below. Yes, implementation will cost more but it will produce savings elsewhere (e.g more children in sport/music because parents can pay for clubs etc).

We're loosing £300 a month all told.Who wouldn't find it hard to loose that much a month?We'll just tighten our belts even more(not quite sure how),great for growth.

Northern bloody hell, you've got a point there. I retract my comments and say HANDS OFF MY CHILD BENEFIT!

I imagine the rethink will make more people worse off rather than less. Fairer maybe but it won't mean more people keep CB.

Northern is spot on in her assessment

28.04.11
'as set out in the White paper, CB will not be included in the Universal Credit....The Chancellor wanted to avoid creating a complex new means test for household income that would have fundamentally changed the nature of Child Benefit. ...Families with no higher rate tax payer, which is around 80% of all families claiming Child Benefit, will be unaffected by this policy....It will be the responsinility of the HR tax payer to inform HMRC whether their household is in receipt of CB...' etc etc
Crappy, badly thought out, and fundamentally unfair.

Sorry, but we earn just over the threshold for losing it and I defy anyone to say we are well-off - the issue about living in London is the cost of everything being higher including transport, housing and even food in the supermarkets. I am not implying that child benefit should have a London Weighting but that our outgoings are considerably higher than someone with an equivalent income living in other parts of the country
We have no car, buy clothes in sales etc....don't have children doing lots of out-of-school activities and we really are not well off at all.We have our own house but do not live in the type of area we should given our levels of education etc...Long and expensive commute and no immediate family to help with free childcare make it better for us to have one parent staying at home with the children.
I know families who scarcely earn over £15K but when you look at their circumstances you find they get max family tax credits and handouts from parents etc.. (which we don't) and virtually non-existent mortgages so they effectively have much more disposable income than we do.
If it was a level playing field then fine and dandy but why should single income families be punished at the expense of joint income families earning almost twice as much? That is never fair.

The Ackermans only pay £57 a month council tax??? where in britain do thay live !!

Precisely! We pay £140 per month (Band D house) - see how much these things impact on cost of living. The two months of the year when we don't pay it (it comes out in 10 instalments) we have a more comfortable existence for sure!

If you earn just over the threshold - as do I - than in comparison to most other people you are very well off.

I can't afford my own house, I buy my clothes mostly second hand or in sales, we have an old car as we live in a rural area although I cannot afford to learn how to drive. We certainly could not afford for one of us to be at home full time. I do no think any of that makes me hard off.

I agree about the single incomes point though.

scrapping child benifit would be a massive vote loser. Tory turkeys dont vote for Christmas.

oh come on 40k goes nowhere in London and some people do have to live in London

I think I once worked out that if you are just over the threshold with 3 kids (or was it 4?!) you would loose 10% of your income i defy anyone not to miss that

i also think it would have been reasonable to assume CB was here to stat but not tax credits (much newer and ?some sort of political ideology about making lots dependent on the state etc etc)

I would not have the four kids because I could never afford them, again that does not make me poor.

How do all the people on significantly less than 40K cope in London?

twinkly lots on less than 40k get big help from benefits, lots have horrendous commutes so they can live in cheaper Kent etc, lots limit the size of their family, lots leave London, some have 'alternative' sources of income (or live in ultra low or mortgage free houses)
some wanted 2 kids and got twins

Scrap it totally. Put the money to free school meal for everyone - make them excellent quality as in France/ 3 courses. As many products sourced locally as possible, will also create lots of good local school term times jobs.

And any remaining to run free breakfast and after school excersise/sports clubs

End it being spent on fags/booze or being saved for Tarquins gap year.

Lots under 40K won't get benefits and limiting the size of your family is the norm. We have one because that is what we can afford. We can finally afford a second so we are trying and hoping it is not too late. I don't think that is such an awful thing.

twinkly you asked I gave some possibilities

good luck with the TTC

is tax credit a benefit?

I'm undecided about the free school meals bit does nothing for preschoolers umm I shall think some more

The government got in with the CB announcement too hastily. It was more of a 'taste of things to come', warning shot across the bows sort of thing. I don't think they (at that point) realised that their almost-election wasn't golden; it's far clearer now that they haven't a hope of a second term unless they pull a fucking golden rabbit out of the hat.

Sorry holiday I didn't mean to be chippy, I am nursing a bad head.

I think tax credits are a benefit.

no problem twinkly I think sometimes writing something makes it sound completely different whereas saying it.....
hope your head gets better soon wont help the TTC.....
was it a good night out or maybe the heat?

I think we're on the private school thread as well amybe it's all those kids lol