Expecting 14th child but will have more babies till twins or triplets??? I must be insane

[Divatheshopaholic]

I dont know if anyone started thread already. I just spotted this on DM
39 year old with 13children expecting 14th and there will be more coming.
I love big family, but after having two, we decided two is just enough but this seems abnormal, having twins or triplets is kind of her destiny

Disguss! What do you think? Would you have as many as her? I

and don't forget the tax credit and child benefit aren't taxed - so it is actually £50,000 a year + his salary.

Is it really?
I'm not saying you're wrong, and I suppose I'm looking at it from the point of view of someone earning it and poaying 40% tax etc. The net sum left doesn't seem like enough for all those mouths to feed.

I guess if they don't pay tax ( which I'm assuming you don't on Tax creidt/benefit income) then it's actually like earning 80 grand which is totally different.

Though I still don't think having all those kids is wise or responsible.

Crossed with you, sorry.

The whole issue though, does make me wonder why the hell the governement hand all this money out.
Wouldn't it be better to insist that businesses pay more realisitic wages?

One thing governments have very little leverage over are market rates for wages.

But can't the government just set a higher minimum wage?
I admit I'm no economic whizz but it just seems very daft for the state to top up those on low incomes rather than make the emplyers pay properly in the first place [naive emoticon]

problem with that is that it's not only the minimum wage earners that frequently rely on the TC to survive (and I'm talking about your "average" 2 or 3 child family - not ones like in the OP) - it's often those on "decent salaries".

Put minimum wage up to a level where TC are supporting them, you have to put the other wages up too......who pays for that?

Yes, that's very naïve .

Businesses pay market rates (except where they are forced to pay above market rates because they have to pay the local minimum wage). If governments raise the minimum wage too high, businesses cannot pass the costs on to their customers and their customers go elsewhere (probably to a company who uses cheaper overseas labour) so jobs are lost.

Then I'm confused. If somone earns a decent salary and only has a few children, why on earth do they need help from the state?

State help is about bringing family's income up to an acceptable level for the particular society that family live in. It's about bringing families within mean income bands.

Supporting a whole family (two adults, several children) on a single income is very difficult in rich countries these days on a normal salary.

What is more daft is to charge tax, get the employer to pay it, then have all the bureaucracy to hand some of it back. That's daft.

As I'm not on the receiving end of any sort of tax relief etc., it does miff me largely that I am paying in thousands of pounds in tax every year, and so could in part be funding a woman who's having children until she can have twins. Just like it irks me that I was funding ornamental duck ponds, the Olympics (really don't want those) and all other manner of pointless frippery. When I could keep that money to spend on pointless frippery myself.

sorry my post should read put minimum wage up to a place where TC aren't supporting them.

I agree Serenity - it's all way too complicated. I don't know why children cannot just be a tax-deductible expense - it would be so much easier to administrate.

But then you may have to rely on people to do their own tax returns, keep receipts and what not. I odn't know which is better actually; getting employers to sort out income tax etc. and not have to worry about it, or doing it yourself, removing the administrative burden from the state (to an extent) and having some way of ensuring that you're not overtaxed.

I've just skimmed through the thread, and regardless of the tax discussion / 16 people in a 3 bed house etc etc, it seems worrying that this woman wants twins / triplets. Has no one pointed out to her that after 14 pregnancies she it looks like she isn't going to have them? Surely someone somewhere should tell her the facts and figures of conceiving multiple pregnancies.

"If somone earns a decent salary and only has a few children, why on earth do they need help from the state?"

Well guess that depends on what you define "decent" as.

If we take the average (£23k - although I stand to be corrected - that was just the first figure I found for 2009 for the UK using google). salary. That's £11 a hour (before tax). Although we as a family of 5 would be comfortable on that - 1000's of other families - especially those living in more expensive parts of the country need the tax credits to survive.

So you put double the minimum wage (currently £5.71hr I believe?) then they are more than likely still going to need the TC's to live, those on £11 atm are going to expect their wages to increase by the same proportion. Great - they may end up not needing the TC's anymore as a result - but someone still pays for that.

And that someone is "business" - most of which (contrary to popular belief) wouldn't be able to afford to pay all their workers these much higher wages and would probably close........resulting in loss of jobs and earnings, and more claiming benefits than already do.

That is true. Sadly, the economy and businesses need lower paid workers in order to survive; if you pay too much in wages, the product you're producing can become too expensive, you lose business and either have to fire workers or close down. As a payback, either the government needs to raise the threshold for untaxed income, so that those on lower incomes manage to keep most of their salary, or provide some form of alternative support (be that housing, money, food credits, free schooling etc.) It is unfeasible, generally, to have an across-the-board highly paid work force.

The economy and businesses need lower paid workers to survive; there are also workers who are not able to perform the complex type of tasks that justify high wages.

Sigh. There's no way round it is there.
I wouldn't like to see people living in poverty, and agree with Bonsiranna that we have to ensure there's a minimum amount everyone's getting in an expensive country.

And yet, I would loath to be dependent in any way on the State, I really would. I don't begrudge anyone their tax credits, yet I feel for them that they have to have them.

God, we really do have to impress upon our children that they will have to get well paid jobs, won't we?
Now whwere's Xenia...

I think the concept of "tax credits" is very wrong on principle.

Here in France children are a tax-deductible expense and I think that that is a much better concept.

well I have to confess until I read this thread I was actually looking forward to not being on benefits when DH is fit to find work again.

However, it would appear that popular opinion says that TC's are no better than JSA/ESA/IS or are the same as so therefore I now face the prospect of being reliant on benefits for years

Bonsoir - what happens to the children of the unemployed as presumabl they're not paying tax so can't claim for a tax deductable expense?? Do they have any unemployment benefits in France >

The benefits for the unemployed are very good in France, and people on low incomes get a lot of help bringing up their children (means-tested crèche from 2 months etc).

The tax-deductibility of children is capped so that higher tax payers don't proportionally get as much of a benefit as lower tax payers from having children.

So someone on unemployment benefits would still get their tax deductible whatsit (see I'm out of my depth now ) regardless.

Here it used to be that the "child element" was paid with your IS or JSA. But that changed a while ago so it all comes from the TC's and everyone gets the same leve lof JSA/IS/ESA regardless of number of children.

Yup.

But the intricacies of the tax and benefits systems are almost impossible to compare - they are certainly way beyond a discussion board like this one!