Tax Credits - Why is it that..

[tullytwo]

We get less now for 3 kids and I no longer work part time than we did 3 years ago with 2 kids when I worked part time? Plus partners salary has decreased slightly too when he changed jobs.

Anyone else finding this?

Its not by much granted but surely it should have gone up slightly not down?

Just wondering

Daisy how did you get the info and can you teach me what you learnt too please! It's impossible to get hold of any concrete details when I've tried looking at their webpages etc.

The thing said about working more hours gets you more money is rubbish. I dropped hours at work which made me better off as I got higher WTC and didn't pay tax on my salary drop. Course i'm on the lower end of ths scale.

Would love to be able to work out at what point it'll be worth me working more hours and how much I could earn without my overall income decreasing and the like. I have to turn down overtime, had to politely explain that last year's pay rise wuld actually make me worse off so could I please not have it, and will probably have to refuse my xmas bonus this year too. All completely crazy

Have a look at this leaflet particularly the section on how my award is worked out and the examples.

HTH

boredveryverybore - I have emailed you to see if you can help!

Admittedly its not a huge amount less but still seems crazy(as I keep saying )

Roughly we use to get @£41.08 (I think) and now we are down to £37.77 for our new award and thats plus an extra child - realise me not working doesnt affect it either way.

BTW there is no overpayment - well as far as I am aware.

Probably going to be something simple isnt it?

Have replied Tully

Thanks for that link Daisy, I have seen it before though and it doesn't get any easier to read.

The examples are all well and good, but as I understand it if you earn £1 over any of those threashhold's your WTC is reduced (Off the top of my head I think gingerbread reported it as something like 27p or 29p. Something like that anyhow). Plus you then in all likelyhood pay tax on that income at 20%, so say 27p off £1 and another 20% taken off for tax means a reduction of 47p on that extra £1 you earnt. Plus your NI contributions will go up.

If the overall pay increase takes you over one of the threashholds you get a significant drop (There's over £2000 difference in what you get if you earn over £10,000 to £15,000 for example. So if you earnt £1 over you'd be a heck of a lot worse off.

This was my problem I think, but I don't know how the drop per £1 over works in it all to be honest. Dropping a small amount of money seems to have made me a lot better off because it took me under the previous level threashold or something!

It would be so much easier if they would just give a simple formula as to how they actually calculate it for every level of income rather than give those examples which do not help you work out what your level would or should be if you are somewhere inbetween those threasholds!

I could work it out of we had proper firumas and figures, I'm an accountant for goodness sake. But they make it pretty much impossible. I think they literally put the figures in and teh computer churns out teh answer. No-one actually knows how it got there!