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?

If immigration was completely stopped, we would still have population growth of 10% by 2030, that's another 6-7 million people. Another greater London and some. So we dont need to pay people to have children. To ensure fairness across all incomegroups, everyone should get CB for the first two.

'Unfortunately this government seems to have decided that it is families with children who will bear the absolute brunt of this deficit reduction plan. Not the wealthy.'

Agree. And disabled people.
Two groups who did not cause this issue. We dont have credit cards, we have never spent a penny more than we have earned.
A dead hamster would make a better chancellor

have been away from the thread for a while but the quote of the week has to be 'a dead hamster would make a better chancellor'

i Thankyew

Great posts esp by Lily Bolero - saving me from needing to type as you've put it all so much better than I could. Enjoyed the Allison Pearson article link too - would that that dream were true!

niceguy - so true, it's rare that we agree but on this particularly shit policy I'm with you 100%.

Well, if the Tories wish to lose the election this is nice easy way to piss off all their core vote in one go.

it looks like a really popular change with 83% of people supporting the policy
labs.yougov.co.uk/news/2010/10/06/child-benefits-reaction/ but the disagreement is in the details - should we pay the cost of means testing households so that total household income can be taken into acccount.

what do people think we will end up with? either the current plan or a slight variation on it.

as to the posters who think i as a childless HRT should pay more tax than i already do for their CB, no thanks. the more tax you play, the more you pay at a higher rate, so the more of any year in your life you spend working to pay your tax contributions. i spent 43% of last year working to pay my tax & NI contribution (calculated using a tax calculator).

looking at the amount of holiday i had & hours worked, that was 1407 hours per year of my time. we all only have one life & thats enough of mine in the common pot. the rest is for me & mine.

Unfortunately that's a really selfish attitude - you are suggesting it is ok for parents to be taxed at ridiculous marginal rates - a 1p pay rise, of which you would keep 60p, would mean a family of 4 loses £3000.....

Even without any care for others, it's foolhardy, as it caps aspiration, and will ultimately 'cap' the economy - who would take a pay rise if it was going to lose them thousands of pounds?

It's fundamentally wrong to suggest that if you're a HRT payer with kids, you shouldn't have to do your fair share in sorting out the deficit. I'm all for FAIR shares, I'm just against parents being forced to pay the brunt of it.

If you look at the the poll, it shows that more are against the current proposals for implementation, even if they support the general idea.

And the poll did not have anything about the NI credit aspects. I wonder what the answer would be to the question: "is it right to remove an existing NI credit from someone because of what another person earns?"

Also, a poll can produce whatever result you want it to, depending on the question;

"Do you agree with removing child benefit from the wealthiest 15% of families?"
or
"Do you agree with a cut of child benefit that sees families on 43k losing it whilst families on 80k retain it?"

I think those questions would yield very different results.

Also, in a crisis of economic growth, which is undoubtedly what we are in, it seems utterly perverse to introduce a massive disincentive to climb the salary scale - who will be able to afford going onto HRT if they are in receipt of child benefit? This has got to be another nail in the coffic of our economy.

LilyBolero. Dh will request a paycut as he is only just over the threshold.

And that is WRONG that you as a family should be in that position.

And it is bad for the economy as well, so it is lose/lose.

Lily how many hour does your family work in a year just to pay into the common pot? If its less than me its odd you call me selfish. How so?

Tilly's attitude is what I was trying to explain earlier. By the way, I'm not suggesting she's wrong either. If I was in her situation then I'd probably feel quite strongly that I pay enough tax thank you very much and the govt should find another mug to pay for whatever hair brained scheme they want to do this week.

The reason I said that was because atm they are trying to claw in as much money as possible, and saying "I pay enough tax, thank you very much" basically means others have to make bigger sacrifices.

The child benefit cut is the equivalent of dh taking a £5k pay cut - 10% of our income. That is HUGE. And it is a ridiculous policy that cannot be implemented fairly.

Putting a penny or so on HRT would not cost HRT payers that much - perhaps £100 a year? But cutting child benefit is stripping THOUSANDS of pounds from an arbitrary group of people.

Imagine putting into effect an income tax rise that was going to cost you £3000 in extra tax, and you might get an idea how unfair it is.

In terms of number of hours, I've no idea how to work that out, but it's a lot! Between us we work about 70 hours pw, and are just into the 40% tax bracket on dh's income, mine is fairly low as is part-time.

but lily - its not a pay cut - its giving less benefit to a family on a good income.

a 42k salary means take home of 31k so you DH spends about 26% of his time at work contributing tax.

a 10k salary (obviously guessing) means a take home of £9.3 so you spend 7% of your time at work contributing tax.

i spend 43% of my time contributing tax. not wanting to spend any more of my time paying tax - why does that make me selfish?

we work about 120 hours per week. so you work less, pay less tax & spend more of your time working for yourself & not working to pay your tax.

If you go down the route of 'the less time you spend paying tax the less the state should support you' then a lot of people will be in a lot of trouble, and that's before we have decided if there is any benefit to society in bringing up children. Thankfully we don't have a society like that.

oddboots - you are correct - the state should not give more support people to people who spend more time paying tax because they are the highest earnest anyway.

(i think you have misunderstood my point but never mind!)

With respect, that's a really rubbish argument.

And, remember the child benefit replaced FAMILY ALLOWANCE - a tax allowance, it is not really a benefit.

(and sorry, I know I haven't justified that statement, but I have got a stinking headache and can't focus on the computer screen, sorry. )

A take home salary of £42k is nowhere near a bring home pay of 31k. Dh brings home less than £26k pa.

I think your dh must have more deductions than tax and NI then Haziedoll as £31k is the normal net from £42k. Pension? Childcare vouchers? CSA? Company car?

Look at it another way, a salary of 12k and a salary of 40k gives you virtually the same take-home pay, once you take into account benefits etc.

Yet at only just above this level you are deemed too wealthy to need child benefit (which as posted below began life as a tax allowance).

It's entirely reasonable that if your salary has to stretch to cover more people, perhaps you should be able to keep a little more of it. It's a fallacy to call it a benefit, anyone on HRT pays in far more than they take out.

With regards to 'who contributes the most hours' - I could counter that with 'who has the higher standard of living?', and I would suggest it was the person i) without children, and ii) on the higher salary within the HRT bracket.

The problems come at the edges, where a pay rise will plunge you over the edge, and lose you thousands of pounds.

Pension and Company car. Really hate having the company car because it is no longer a benefit, taxed through the nose and policy has changed so that employees are now responsible for some of the costs. Until dh can find a new job we are stuck with it.