Government to review child benefit cuts

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Was on lunchtime news (on phone so can't do link) that the government have confirmed that they will review the plans to cut child benefit. Sounds like they will still do something - what do people think we will end up with?

The winter fuel allowance is a real problem. My mum and her friends sit there shivering in winter with the heating barely on. They receive the allowance but are of an age when they can remember everything costing half a shilling and think the costs are excessive (which they are but they are given money to help).

yes but someone who earns 42k whose wife is a carer and they have a severely disabled child isn't loaded by any stretch of the imagination. I know it's all relative and it depends on what you had in the first place, where you live etc. but if you were not very well off in the first place and then one of you loses a full time income through no fault of your own and you are facing the prospect of caring long term, until your old age, well it's a not particularly great situation to be in and compared to two earners with an income of 40k

I don't think people should expect to be subsidised because they have a large family, but I do think that this particular group of people is not the group where you need to worry about that tbh! On the whole, people in this income group are working out if they can afford children.

1p or 2p on income tax would mean the pain was shared round all HRT payers, not just parents.

"to add, there are groups where I think it is a problem to be constantly paying more for every extra child, but not in this demographic!

"The winter fuel allowance is a real problem. My mum and her friends sit there shivering in winter with the heating barely on"

If pensioners won't turn the heating on then there is very little we can do to help them. Pensioners are adults and provided that they have the financial means to heat a living room, kitchen and one bed room, there is little the tax payer can do.

I feel that there should be more pressure on pensioners to downside to a smaller and easier to heat property. It is daft having one old lady living in a four bed house.

"I feel that there should be more pressure on pensioners to downside to a smaller and easier to heat property. It is daft having one old lady living in a four bed house."

This is an argument I'm hearing more and more - looking at my MIL, it would kill her to move. No way on earth could she ever do it -it's all very well saying 'they should downsize', but actually the practicalities of packing and disposing of 40,50,60 years of living in a house are totally impossible for many pensioners. Not to mention having no space for children/grandchildren to come and stay. And if it's their house, that they've brought their family up in, I totally disagree that there should be pressure to move. I honestly think it would be the last thing she ever did if MIL had to move, she doesn't like leaving the house at the best of times!

I don't really understand why older people don't want to downsize. I already have my eye on 1 bedroom little retirement flats. I don't want my children to have to worry about me in a house that I can't maintain.

It's to do with the stress of moving alot of the time. I know with my grandparents my grandad had parkinsons and just would NOT move at all. It got to the point where the bed had be brought downstairs and the upstairs was never used :( as soon as died though my gran sold up and moved into a little one bed bungalow, but she had wanted to do that for ages

'KalSkirata your DH isn't earning £42k is he? I just get ticked off when people earning £42k crying poor. That's more than a lot of peoples combined income. If there are two of your DH, you will still be on £36k, and you have childcare to pay.'

No, he earns 18K. I earn nothing. I was pointing out people think SAH's have rich partners. I dont.

I'd like someone to tell me how they could enforce this. Child benefit is paid to me. I am taxed separately from my husband. I am not a higher rate tax payer. Married couples haven't been taxed together since the 60s/70s? What about civil partners? What about unmarried couples with children? What about if you live with your parents and have a child and are supported by them?

THEY.HAVE.NOT.THOUGHT.THIS.THROUGH.IT.WON'T.WORK

'Married couples haven't been taxed together since the 60s/70s?' 1980s actually I think.

I can't see any way around the tax thing, as HRTs don't claim tax credits, and under Data Protection my tax affairs and dh's should not be linked. Either they take away CB, and rely on me to tell them that I'm married to an HRT, or they rely on him to say I claim CB; or, they introduce transferable allowances which would presumably cost more than the CB anyway.

Scaryteacher - you can claim tax credits up to £50,000 so there is an overlap in the htr but that is paid to the earner.

I agree it would be a nightmare for them to work out tho
In our house ,not married, no tax credits, child benefit paid to stay at home mum. How on earth are they going to work out that I shouldn't get it. Or are they just going to rely on people worrying that if they get it and shouldn't one day they will be found out and have to pay the whole lot back.
Also what if the htr earning partner is NOT the biological father/mother of the child?
And what if the father is a htr earner but does not live with the family? There are too many variables for this to work properly.

What I thought they had proposed to do was to put a tick box on your tax return asking the question "is anyone in your household in receipt of child benefit" and presumably another box for the value, so that the benefit would continue to be paid, but be clawed back via the HR taxpayers self-assessment submission.

No idea whether this is practical or not, but agree with others who would prefer a penny on HRT across the board. (Or better still, more tax on property, particularly un-lived in property, but that's another thread)

I wondered too about households where the hrt payer is not the biological parent of the children - why should he/she be penalised?

ScaryTeacher - I agree that it's going to be hard to make this work. But if HMRC made each HRT fill out a form listing the names and DOBs of any children who live with them (or are dependent on them, or whatever the bureaucratic criterion might be), that could be cross-checked against the CB records, and the HRT made to pay extra tax equal to the CB being paid, without telling the recipient of the CB. So CB continues to be paid, and the recipient does not need to know partner's tax position.

I'm not saying I like it, and it probably has flaws, but like you, I waiting to see how those clever civil servants will implement Osborne's back of the fag-packet idea.

Anyway, on the principle, I add my support to keeping CB and instead putting the HR up to 42p or 43p...

1. It's fair (it makes my teeth grind when I hear govt ministers say "it's fair to put the pain on the richest", when the CB measure leaves alone HRT without children).

1. It's easy to implement (and to vary or reverse).

1. I think it can raise a similar amount (HMRC data suggests about £40b is raised from the HR band, so each 1p rise in the rate should raise another £1b).

1. It's progressive. If you earn £1000 above the HR threshold, it will cost you an extra £20 or £30. You'd have to be on a salary of nearly £100k for the hit to equal 2 children's worth of CB.

Yes - agree. The first plan is so flawed as to be unworkable and will be remembered by voters primarily for the obvious unfairness and poor logic. More tax is much better. Any way that you give to one partner and take from the other leads to problems - what if the recipient had kept the cb a secret, or the hrt hasn't mentioned his or her actual income level? If the hrt gets stung, there is every chance they will insist the cb gets put to one side to cover any clawback under dad s plan.

Yes, when Gideon stands up and says "It's Tough but Fair" it makes me want to throw something at him.

We are losing £3k. 10% of our income. That is NOT fair. Families on double our income are keeping their child benefit. HRT payers without children are not being hit on the whole.

We would need a MASSIVE salary before a 1p or 2p rise resulted in 3k extra tax.

It just took me 5 mins to go to Nick Clegg's official website www.dpm.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/content/contact (I chose him because he recently joined Tory ministers in saying the CB measure is fair) and send him the following. Anyone else fancy doing something similar?

Instead of removing child benefit, why not raise the higher rate of tax to 42p?

It's fairer (please give up the broken logic from ministers that it's fair to put the pain on the rich, when the CB measure has no impact on HR taxpayers without children).

It's progressive (cost of a few £100 for many).

It's easier to implement and vary.

It gets my vote.

Good thinking, have emailed Nick Clegg, David Cameron and George Osborne's offices.

And I wrote to my MP yesterday already.

I wrote to my MP and he said he supported the removal of CB from HRTpayers. He said the current situation means that families on £15k are paying taxes that go towards paying for the CB of much wealthier families and that is not fair. They just don't get it.

haziedoll: what exactly was the quesion that those constituents were asked? How did h ascertain these views, or is he just quoting what HMT was saying yesterday?

Did he mention their views on the NI credit, and why a woman (because it is usually a women) might stand to lose this - so important to her long term entitlements because of another person's current tax position?

Did he mention who is supporting the principle of independent taxation?

Did he mention who supports the doubling of the threshold for families of a certain type?

Haziedoll - The argument used by your MP and others (have heard Susan Kramer use it on question time) is the one that infuriates me most. No people on small incomes are not paying for child benefit for Higher rate tax payers as higher rate tax payers pay more than enough tax themselves to cover it. Furthermore before we had children many of us worked for years paying taxes and not receiving child benefit (through not yet having children). Given that we will not be retiring till our late sixties we will have contributed more than enough.

I haven't heard MPs consulting their constituents on whether they wanted their taxes spent on other things like Afghanistan or Libya, which have cost a lot more than child benefit.

My MP (Tory) made supportive comments when I complained to him about child benefit and other issues.

Average annual household income in my area is over 60k. Therefore a family with an income of 42k total are earning below average and spending a fortune on housing.

By the way Higher rate tax payers are already sharing the load as they have lost tax credits which used to be paid up to 60k and the threshold to pay hrt has been lowered to stop them benefitting from the personal allowance change. I think the government could start closing a few loopholes allowing the mega rich to avoid tax before they come back putting up income tax for everyone else. Surely paying 40% of everything one earns above the 42k threshold is enough?