Child benefit to be axed?

[Coolfonz]

Here's a nice article representing some city views...the comments are nice as well! Good old Tory voters!! Rah rah!!

www.citywire.co.uk/personal/-/news/money-property-and-tax/content.aspx?ID=401785&re= 9506&ea=228360

"But if Osborne wants to save real money, Child Benefit is looking increasingly vulnerable after his hatchet job on CTFs. Child Benefit is a universal tax free benefit paid to all parents at a rate of £20.30 a week for the first child and £13.40 a week for subsequent children. Official statistics show that some 7.5 million families receive Child Benefit in respect of 13 million children at an annual cost to the Exchequer of over £7 billion a year and rising - annual increases are index linked. After the axing of Child Trust Funds, Child Benefit could be next on the list."

No, but then it does increase the administration costs significantly. I imagine paying it via PAYE would help, but then that didn't work with working tax credits did it...

Child benefit is very cheap to administer, because it is universal and because of our registering system it is easy to ascertain who gets what.

For us growing up as children, it was also the one bit of cash my dad couldn't get his hands on and so didn't end up in the pub or the bookies.

Why not target tax avoidance loopholes instead of pickpocketing people's child benefit. Whatever the rights and wrongs of tax avoidance (and it does seem to be viewed as an acceptable perk for the wealthy) - the fact is, we can't afford it at the moment.

It was decided a long time ago that the state would be responsible if the husband/partner was a tight fisted bully to avoid the all too common scenario where the hubby blew his pay packet in the pub on a Friday leaving the wife without a penny to feed the children, that still happens in some families.

And as for tax returns in USA, absent fathers complete them when it suits them in my experience when they have something to gain, so I guess that applies to the general population too.

rusty bear- attendance allowance isn't means tested. it is a v long form to fill in , though

winter fuel allowance, it's a total sham. what about all the expats who get it too.!! my mother included.

it should be for the poor people who are freezing and have litle money.

i dunno, some of these government things seem so lazily applied and stupidly worked out.

my CB is a lifesaver for me.

if it's going to be means tested it need to take into account the number of children you have, as well as the amount you earn. (CTC doesn't do that) Someone mentioned that the threshold could be 35K - so to use that as an example - a family with 1/2 children on 34K is a lot better off than a family with 3/4 children on 40K!

I am a pensioner [62] and am on Pension Credit. I am also a carer for my grandson whom I've had for 9 years and he is nearly 11. I couldn't manage without the Child Benefit and I certainly couldn't manage without the Winter Fuel allowance.

CTC does so that? It varies with earnings and number of children????

CTC does take into account the number of children and the amount you earn

Yeah winter fuel allowance, who needs that? only 30,000 pensioners froze to death last winter, i mean what do they contribute to economic growth? nothing. surely we could just freeze loads more of them to death, like under the last Tory government, then it was around 52,000 a year died. why should i pay just to keep some old person from freezing to death in their own home, they should have worked harder when they were productive consumers.

instead they could cut inheritance tax, that is a real outrage. or maybe they could combine the two, so i get my school fees paid by the estate of dead pensioners.

go Dave and Nick!!

But Marjorie, if it was means tested then you would still be entitled to both of them.

That is what I mean, my mum is also on pension credit and she needs the winter fuel allowance to pay her winter heating bills. Whereas my inlaws (and plenty of other people) see it as a bit of extra spending money for their hols.

I agree that means testing would be a nightmare to administrate though.

CTC does go up with the number of children, up to 3 children anyway. We got more with each child.

agree that the winter fuel allowance should be looked at - so that those that DON'T need it (like the ones living it up in the south of spain) don't get it, but those in the UK that DO need it (including those that have disabilites so not just older people) get it

Agree with those saying Child Benefit is a lifesaver.

There's nothing wrong with tax evasion! It's what this country is built on. Or rather it's what the channel islands are built on - Jersey has $1trillion in its banks and it didn't come from the butter industry - and the Cayman Islands ($1.4tr) and Nauru and Gibralter and...

Why should good hearted multi millionaires pay tax anyway? if it wasn't for them none of you would even have a job. haven't you heard of trickle down?

Pay back your child benefit and go and work in MacDonalds. Better still, send your kids to work there.

But if child benefit is paid into the parents' joint account (as ours is) then a father who is abusive is just as able to get his hands on it to drink/gamble/whatever. And if he is abusive, he will be perfectly capable of bullying the mother into having it paid into a joint account. Plus who says it isn't the mother who is abusive and drinking/gambling the kids' money?

I can see the point of why CB was introduced, but unfortunately the situation isn't just that simple!

Not everybody has a joint account. If H is a problem, its a good idea not to.

But, if H is a problem isn't he perfectly capable of forcing W into having a joint account? And giving her hell if she has the CB paid elsewhere?

I would love it if benefits where targeted on those who really need them instead of handed out to everyone but the problem with targeting benefits is the stupid why they do it with the ones that are, it's based on pay before tax and takes nothing into account at all.

plenty of people will get nothing who need help and others will get it who don't need it.

so if it's reformed so that it is targeted at poor people they will have to take into account the following things.

Pay after Income tax/NI, geographic location, council tax rates, rent/housing statues, travel to work costs.

Trust me it's hard enough to get a non abusive bloke to give you a joint account never mind an abusive one !

And of course you get alcoholic, gambling mothers too I guess every eventuality can't be covered but that was/is the theory anyway, that most mums would spend the CB on the children.

Send your kids up my many many chimneys you slackers!

the only problem with axing CB completely is that a man on 50K a year pays the same tax whether he has three dependents or none - which I believe is unfair. You can say that we chose to have our kids, but on the other hand I think it's reasonable that the state makes allowances for the fact that my DH's salary has to cover a lot more essentials (food, basic clothes, toilet paper etc - the basic costs that apply to every single person regardless of income) for all of us than if he was single. CB sort of works to rectify this by allowing middle and higher earners to get some money back if they have children. Other countries handle this by creating larger personal allowances based on the number of dependents. In some ways CB is better because it's equal for everyone whereas the personal allowance benefits higher earners more (since they are on a higher tax rate).

That being said, while we really appreciate our CB each month and it does pay for things like the boys swimming and playgroups, if it needs to be cut for higher earner families to handle the deficit, I can accept that as long as it's done with other cuts like non means tested pensioner benefits etc (but we will have to reduce our expenditure - we're not that well off).

I find this article very depressing.

If I have my sums right, then the CTC in 2008 cost over half a billion to administer, plus it had paid out a billion in error that it had written off. And if there were 12 million children in the UK at the time (best estimate that I could find) then that makes 1.5 billion divided by 12 million = 125 pounds per child every year. Tha's over half of what we receive as a family.

Child poverty action group states that the administrative costs of CTC are three times higher than those for child benefit - doc is http://www.cpag.org.uk/MakeChildBenefitCount/ChildBenefit_3.htm here. So you wonder how much they would actually save by means testing. Means testing is a really expensive way of giving someone money.

Not that I have the answer though. We certainly need to save money as a country as we are in a big hole.

Whoops. Second article

Oh well if they do that will the only benefit we are entitled too taken away NOT because we are wealthy but because my husband is foreign

Mrspear - once your husband gets indefinite leave to remain do you become eligible then? We were in the same boat and they tried to tell my husband he was in trouble because I claimed CB which is not true... Anyways, once we'd been married four years (he came on a spouse visa) and he had indefinitely leave to remain i thought the rules changed... My DH is a british citizen now.