Do you find the child benefit charge unfair?

[fairertaxesnow]

Did you know that in most western countries, couples and families are given the option to be taxed on their COMBINED income, instead of being taxed individually? The reason for this is because it is MUCH FAIRER!

In the UK, taxes are relatively low for individuals, but they do not take into account how many people depend on that income. So a single man/woman with no dependants who spends all their money on themselves pays the same exact amount of taxes than a dad/mom with several children and a partner/spouse who stays at home because childcare is too expensive (or because it is best for young children, as research has demonstrated, or even if it's not their choice to stay at home but they can't find a job!)

Yes, there is (a pretty small) child benefit but this is capped/eliminated depending on the income level, and with only one parent earning money, the family will loose most of the benefit at relatively low income levels.

How is that fair!? This country needs to support families just like the rest of the western countries and not punish single earner families with a parent at home or working part time by placing the highest tax burden on them. Ultimately this affects the children, who are the future!

The child benefit charge is also very unfair, as many people have observed, because single earner families will start loosing their benefit at much lower household income (£50k) than double-earner families (they could earn up to £100k and have full benefits!)

Please sign the following petition to ask our government to modify the tax system to allow families to be taxed on their combined household income, just as most other countries have been doing for decades:

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/216429

Also, please share it with as many people as you can! The government will only respond if we reach 10,000 signatures!

More info:
www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/8365211/Britain-worst-place-for-tax-burden-on-single-earner-families.html
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/11/single-income-families-inequality-workers-fathers-earnings

I disagree with this petition. There is no reason to give couples a financial benefit, specifically because one of them chooses not to work. People need to take responsibility for the financial implications of their choices.

I say this as someone who would be slightly better off under joint taxation, as my husband earns much less than I do, so doesn't maximise his lower taxation threshold.

I think you are being very naive about how long it takes to change tax policy, let alone overhaul the system

Hmrc have announced they are stopping work on all projects, including simple assessment and dynamic coding for the foreseeable.

These were fairly straight forward and have been sidelined due to brexit.

MTD was first announced in 2014. Vat MTD may or may not come in next year, but isn't a huge change from what's already done. MTD for business tax has been postponed to 2020 and may be shelved indefinitely.

These are not even fundamental changes to the tax code and have been a clusterfuck.

With Brexit, the climate around anti avoidance and MTD I can guarantee there will be virtually no political appetite to making fundamental changes to the tax system. They're struggling to handle the current tax system and the above are the priorities.

I would like to see a move to a system where children are given free childcare after maternity leave. Obviously this would mean higher taxes for everyone. What we might end up with though is a society where all children have equality of opportunity to benefit from structured care by professionals at a very early age and mothers who are not disadvantaged by returning to work. Might be dependent on persuading employers to pay what it actually costs to live and abolition of the tax credit system which is, in my opinion, grossly unfair and a subsidy for businesses which would otherwise not be viable.

Mybabystolemysanity there are 3.1 million Ofsted registered childcare places in England (2016). The Average cost for an under 2 for 25 hours a week is £6,344, so the total cost would be about £20 billion, about a 4% rise in the tax base rate. I can't see any political party proposing to raise taxes by so much.

Hmrc have announced they are stopping work on all projects, including simple assessment and dynamic coding for the foreseeable. These were fairly straight forward and have been sidelined due to brexit. MTD was first announced in 2014. Vat MTD may or may not come in next year, but isn't a huge change from what's already done. MTD for business tax has been postponed to 2020 and may be shelved indefinitely.

Brexit is a handy excuse but the real reasons are abysmal planning, impossibility to deliver, IT systems failures, incompetent HMRC/treasury staff, etc. MTD was never going to happen and HMRC will be forever grateful they got an excuse (Brexit) to shelve it. The relatively simple things brought in recently such as cash basis will go down in history as classic examples of how not to do things. The new interest zero rate bands, dividend zero rate bands, etc sound simple but yet again, HMRC have managed to foul up the implementation as they couldn't even "do the sums" and so produced software that gave wrong results. The last thing the country needs are any more changes to the tax system.

Mybaby there are problems with that two. Essentially making childcare almost compulsory. Very early childcare benefits children from deprived backgrounds but is of no benefit to children with educated mothers who are not suffering any relevant mental health issues and are engaged with their children (it's only the educational level etc of mothers that appears to impact but obviously that's because it's mothers go for 101 reasons most often do most of the childrearering).

I agree it's a catch 22 because SAH impacts women's careers/ earning later and their is misogyny so deeply entrenched in most employment situations because of the chance female employees will take maternity leave/ leave after maternity leave/ go part time.

I strongly disagree that the solution is to essentially force mothers to put their children into full time childcare at 6 months old though. Choice has to remain.

I stayed home til all my kids were 3 (taught evening classes once DH was home, varying number of evenings per week depending - only one evening when I had a 4 month old, more when all were weaned...). I do believe that was right and don't regret it. Getting back to work wasn't easy for various reasons (we've also moved countries since I had dc1, new language, different qualifications). The shared tax system where we now live made it seem pointless at times - you have to want to do it for your sanity, and take a long term view and think if your pension. Not everyone is in a position to do that.

There is no perfect solution but shoving every baby into full time effectively compulsory childcare to push women not to SAH is no better than taxing as couples and pushing women to stay home.

Individual taxation is a positive for a balanced position. Some more realistic state subsidy of childcare would be sensible. Where we are it's subsidised for everyone for babies over 1 year (maternity leave is a full year) but subsidy depends on family earnings. I think that is the case in a lot of countries. It can still cost more than you earn if you have multiple young children though. Here childcare is only free for everyone in the year before starting school, but as school starting age is 6 here UK kids are already at school then anyway!

*too not two

Sorry their should be there. I really should proofread, lots of the type of spelling errors which annoy people in my post!

This would work if the personal allowance was adjusted.

Eg
Single person = 1 x £11k allowance
Couple = 2 x £11k allowance = £22k
And add an allowance for each D.C.

So a single mum with 2dcs would have to earn £33k before paying IT

That would make childcare affordable and would solve some of the poverty trap.

I strongly disagree that the solution is to essentially force mothers to put their children into full time childcare at 6 months old though. Choice has to remain.

She said at end of maternity leave, so 12 months, not 6. Also, while I agree free childcare will never happen due to cost I don't see why providing a free service is 'essentially forcing' people to use it? Of course rates of children in childcare would go up if it was free, but I suspect plenty of people would still choose not to work.

Is a good idea. I'd even go as far as to suggest that child benefit should be abolished and the money distributed to those that actually need it.

Many people on CB do need it.

Sorry Margaret I'm out of touch with the UK - I had my first child in England nearly 13 years ago and maternity leave was only 6 months. Is it a year now? That's good.

I have heard from friends in France there is huge social pressure not to be a Sahm. It's unusual and regarded as wierd apparently. I have read this about other countries too - where childcare is free or heavily subsidised the social pressure to use it becomes huge. No, people aren't forced at gun point, but governments can strongly encourage people to live the way policy makers wish them to through taxation and subsidies and education policy, and quickly social pressure to do whatever is normal and changes to the structure of society follow.

flowermug2 and those are the people to whom it should be distributed to, and at a higher rate if we stop paying it to relatively wealthy families for which it's just a bit of extra spending money.

It is, and a lot of women take the full year - even though it's only paid (at dismal SMP rates) for 39 weeks. Which is part of why I suspect that free childcare wouldn't actually make all women go back to work; women already don't rush to go back to work at the first point it makes financial sense.

I just had a look and found this article (www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2017/mar/14/stay-at-home-mums-a-drain-on-the-economy-actually-the-problem-might-lie-with-men), which suggests that 73.5% of French mothers with a child under 14 work, vs. 69.4% of UK mothers. That's obviously quite a partial picture - it may well be that a lot more French mothers work full-time and that they go back earlier - but that doesn't suggest to me that more heavily subsidised childcare 'forces' many more women into work.

@swingofthings, that is not my "view", and you don't seem to understand how research works. You may have news articles claiming opposing things because they interpret the science in a self-serving manner but when it comes to the actual science, most of the time the research agrees. In the issue of early childcare, the studies showed a range of outcomes but they all show negative effects, from very mild to more significant.

I am glad that your children turned out so well, but I never said that early childcare means children are sentenced to traumatic experiences and low IQ! Just that being raised by a SAHP in the first two years is better for their wellbeing.

And by the way I also put my firstborn in nursery early, at 4 months old. I am not judging anyone!

"most of the time the research agrees. In the issue of early childcare, the studies showed a range of outcomes but they all show negative effects, from very mild to more significant"

Which rather depends on your culture. Research in the 1990s which in Britain was said to show that nursery DC were 'more aggressive' was reported in Belgium as worrying evidence that not sending your DC to nursery led to them being excessively passive.

fariertaxsnow, I do think I know how research works thank you. I have a degree in psychology and went on to study public health including epidemiology, so I know quite a bit about scientific research and I know that when it comes to the benefit of children being brought up by parents or childcare provider, you can make a list of research that will point out both.

Saying that, considering you are encouraging people to sign a petition to encourage a change to UK legislation, you might have wanted to quote a British research rather than an American one. Here's one that is certainly more relevant and ummmm, a bit more up to date being 2017 rather than 2003.
www.familyandchildcaretrust.org/long-term-study-following-4500-children-links-childcare-better-outcomes

I am no expert in the research on childcare, I based my opinion on trusted sources that reviewed the relevant science. On your post it seemed to me that you were talking in general when you said that for every piece of research claiming one thing, another will claim the opposite. If that's how science worked we would never make any progress! And in the topic of childcare, my point is regarding very young children, going to daycare as babies (and especially if they are going full time). Your reference doesn't talk about how young the children were when they started childcare, except to say: "Children who received more than 35 hours per week of childcare [...] were more likely to lose their temper and act aggressively.[...] These children who experienced these negative effects [...] were five times more likely to have started receiving childcare in their first year." (the part in between the brackets says that they were a small minority, I am not trying to hide anything to make it agree more with my argument so please don't make a thing of it). So again, this is more evidence that supports that many hours of early childcare is not good gor children's wellbeing. And I am not concerned with whether the children have higher verbal abilities but more about their enotional wellbeing.

No I wasn't talking about research in general, I was talking about this matter specifically. If you choose to read what you want to read only, then of course you are going to convince yourself that research is supporting your views. The fact that you pointed to an article written in an american newspaper 15 years old, which clearly you took as 'relevant' research makes me think that you don't know much at all about research methods. One of the study your article quotes only looked at children age 3 and 4 in daycare only. The other 'only' considered 1,000 children in 10 american city, so much smaller scale than the recent British study.

I only responded to your claim because it really gets to me when SAHM try to justify their choice by claiming to everyone who will hear it that they do it purely because it is so much better for children, and then go and moan that they don't have enough money and it's not fair.

I have no issues at all with SAHM. It's a choice, a personal one, and that's absolutely fine, but trying to make those who make a difference choice, usually because they can't afford not to work, or are thinking of their longer term financial position, or, dare they, actually enjoy working, feel guilty because they are supposedly not giving their kids the best chance in life is really not on. Thankfully, the more reliant research evidence that they are making the right choice for their children.

this is more evidence that supports that many hours of early childcare is not good gor children's wellbeing.

Or, you could look at the sentence before what you wrote and see this The more hours of childcare in a nursery or childminder setting children received per week, the less common it would be for children to be worried or unhappy. Children were also more likely to share toys and show empathy for others the more hours per week they received of childcare in a nursery or similar setting

If you want to be a SAHP that is your choice but don't complain about a tax system that helps families where both parents work and don't cherrypick evidence to bash people who made a different choice from you.

I’m also in favour of individual taxation. I am a single parent and post from that perspective. I am also a feminist and this seems like a trip to the 50s. I agree that the child benefits system is far from perfect- I have to pay mine back and I have no one at home that does unpaid childcare.

I have to pay mine back and I have no one at home that does unpaid childcare
Exactly, if there is one group most penalised by this, it's single parents earning more than £50K who have to pay childcare. I would sign a petition to say that they should be exempt, not one that penalised working people against those who have made the choice not to.

Not one that penalises working people

I agree with this 100%

Women fought for independent taxation and the right to equal pay etc and I certainly don't want to go back to the 1950s

I won't sign. I've been married long enough to remember when there was a married person's allowance, which was mainly paid to husbands (it could be split but not many women claimed). At that time the gender pay gap was even worse than today, so by increasing the tax free benefit to the husband that certainly nudged behaviour towards women staying home with children, some never worked again, or if they did, in part-time roles well below their education / skills.

I would, however, bring back universal (non means-tested)CB for the first 2 - 3 children in a family.

The benefits to children being at home obviously vary according to the quality of the home environment, the education of the parent and interaction with the child vs what they would experience in nursery / childcare. Have a look at findings from the large scale longitudinal EPPE research.