Martin Lewis - Pressuring Government on Child Benefit

[Mummytummy123]

Finally someone putting some pressure on the government over the child benefit cap farce!!!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12993689/martin-lewis-pressure-jeremy-hunt-child-benefit-rules.html

At last, common sense. Tired of being penalised for working.

Same. I’ve been at either ends of the scale - it was only a few years ago I was on a low income single salary, on UC, on the verge of bankruptcy and also having to feed my children from food banks. And now I’m earning over £50k, in a totally different position, I’m solely being penalised for working hard. DP is on less than £50k. Things need to change

I've signed so many petitions on this issue, it would be interesting to know how many times the government has rejected this. It's grossly unfair.

That would be interesting to know wouldn’t it!

The limit needs to be raised. It's been 50k for a decade.

The limit needs raising and also the single person rather than household income.

I hope they listen . Currently SAHM no income, husband earns but not entitled salary over 60k. Should be done based on the individual claiming not combined.

I agree that the threshold should be upped or better still change it back to universal
It would be interesting to know how much they have actually saved since this came in with the additional admin costs to process all the self assessments
While they're at it, all of the tax bands need moving upwards too!
Not holding my breath though, this government doesn't seem interested in throwing any bones to the taxpayers

How is proposing to fix it though? I agree it’s vastly unfair but also don’t think we should just say “ok - any household who earn more than £50k taxable income should start paying it back”

I actually don’t think it should have any cap on it at all…there are better ways of earning that tax back

Not sure what the best option is for it to be honest. The current system is ridiculous and unfair though, I agree.

Making it universal again probably isn’t an option as they’ll just be blasted about giving the money to wealthy families.

Basing it on household income is the most sensible option, but it’s administered under the personal tax system which is done on an individual level and doesn’t really look at household income, which is why it’s been set up how it is. It would have to be totally revamped to make it part of the benefits system instead (I assume).

I think the easiest option they’ll go for, IF they do anything, is keeping it the same but raising the cap.

It is absurd that something as obviously unfair as this child benefit nonsense ever came to be at all.

Child benefit is a benefit - it should be based on household income when it is means tested in any way - all other means tested benefits are not based on individual income! The household limit should be £100k

Taxes are per person - benefits should be per household. I cannot believe it is not possible to do that easily.
No need to remove the means-testing and pay it to people who really don't need it

More awareness needs to be done on it for people especially that it pays your national insurance contribution if you decide not to go back to work. You can also donate the NI bit to grandparents to help up their NI contributions if they are short and doing a lot of childcare.

You can also choose not to claim the money just the stamp element

It's a deliberate policy of the government's to reduce the amount they have to pay in benefits as more and more families end up over the archaic high income threshold. As such they won't change it