If you pay tax then you should not receive benefits.

[jollydiane]

If you pay tax then you should not receive benefits.

Please explain what is the point of taxing me, only to give me money back in the form of child tax benefits? Surely it is better for me to pay less tax in the first place and not receive the benefit. The end result is less money needed to pay for bureaucrats. We then can maintain front line services. Discuss.

Having read this through, what strikes me is that it is simply a truth that people are different,with different skills, personalities,energies,etc, and for instance, what suits Xenia,isnt possible for Loudlass.What Xenia may see as a challenge, as a possibility for making money;Loudlass sees as a huge obstacle,and remember she does not have the benefit of good health; which really is pretty fundamental.

 Self-employment does not suit a lot of people,they want the security of a regular wage.Sadly there are going to be less and less of those to find.

I do think Xenia is right about outlook, luck,ways of thinking.

But maybe it is actually all about luck, the initial bit of luck being the personality you were born with.

And what does make one person end up poor and unsuccessful, and another rich? I do think we all have gifts, and some of us have a gift for making money, and some of us dont.

But all of us are equally valuable human beings.

Whilst I accept that you can have a variable income for tax credits urposes, it can cause porblems, as a few years ago I had a job where I did different amounts of overtime each week, and even though I contacted the TC helpline every month with my earnings for the month, told them they were paying me too much etc - they overaid me consistently, and I ended up with such a huge overpayment that they were deducting £12 a week from my TC's (even when I was out of work) for 4 years. So given previous problems with it, I need a regular wage.

And as for HB - EVERY time I earnt a different amount (which was every month...) they STOPPED my HB while they reassessed me, and each reassessment took 6 weeks...so it took so long for them to reassess me each time that I'd given them a different income amount before they'd even reassessed the last one! It got to the point where it took them 6 months AFTER I lost that job to catch up on the reassessments, at which point I was on IS, I ended up with a notice of seeking possession on my rented house through non-payment of rent, and nearly lost my home.

A variable income when you are reliant on TC's and HB is far too much of a headache as the government departments are unable to reassess quickly enough, and I can't afford to have less one financial year to have it 'added' to the next one, as how do you pay your bills if you don't have the full amount you need coming in each week?

That sounds like you had an awful experience. And yeah, I completely understand the housing benefit issue from friends experiences; that system doesn't work without a regular income and that makes it impossible for your situation. As I understand it, this is something that the government hope to address with their universal credit plans?

I suspect that the tax credit system was altered, as I think that when I first claimed it was new to be able to provide an estimate for the year (that would be 4/5 years ago). They've also made big changes to how much extra you can earn before your tax credits drop.

Reading through the experience of some, it makes me feel even more that there is such waste and inefficency when it comes to the admin of benefits and tax. So I stand by my opening sentance.

Jollydiane - I see where you are coming from, but surely you can understand the basic principle that some people will work full time, and still be getting more back in tax credits/housing benefit than they are paying in taxes, and if you took that away from them, they would not survive. And I mean that in the most basic fashion, they would not have a roof over their head, not even a single room. Even though they work FT.

You don't abolish something that important to a huge amount of people because it's inefficient - you make it work efficiently!

I understand about the estimates, but if you're on a variable income, that's pretty much imossible to do with any degree of accuracy. At the moment, anything I could earn wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference to our TC's, because I think the limit where they start to 'drop' the TC's is something like £25K? Not certain on that, but even if I worked PT for min wage, say 16 hrs a week, we'd only be getting round about £21,500 - £22K pa household income anyway. So it would just be extra on top of what we scrape by on atm.

I reiterate though, even with DP working FT, and me working PT, our household income without TC's/HB would be £21,500 - £22,000 pa. Yeah, we can rent a house to fit 5 (soon to be 6) in our town and pay for food and utilities out of that. Not.

Good points loudlass, but I bet you have to pay tax on the income you earn? What I object to is you having to pay tax, and then having it paid back to you after the red tape has swallowed some up. Why not allow you to earn more money (i.e. equal to the current tax credits) WITHOUT having to pay income tax in the first place? I am NOT trying to reduce your standard of living.

To me its a bit like taking blood out of one arm (splilling alot) and then putting what is left back into the other arm.

I get where you are coming from, jollydiane, BUT there is NO CHANCE of DP earning more, so if ALL the TC's were taken away, we would be up a creek without a paddle. For those whose TC's would be less than or equal to the tax they are paying, then I can see that what you are suggesting would cut out a lot of admin, and wasted money. But for people like us, who get more back in TC's than we pay in taxes, even if we were allowed to not pay tax, we would still have enough of a shortfall to push us into poverty.

You absolutely cannot say that everyone is capable of earning X amount (if X = wages + Tax Credits) if X amount is more than you would get in a FT minimum wage job. So I suppose what you are saying is that DP's wages would have to rise to cover the amount that we get in Tax Credits,minus what we pay in tax? Can't see his employers going for that one TBH.

Isn't that what the universal credit along with the Lib Dem increased tax thresehold proposes though?

Don't pay tax if you earn under £K (eventually up to 10K), we'll still top up your money if you earn under a certain amount but we want it to be one simpler system. If you both work we let you keep even more?

The housing benefit does concern me, will only work with regulations for land lords to protect tentants. Hope this is worked out in the actual legislation.

Loudlass; you said that anything you earn that only takes your income up to £25K would just be a bit on top of what you have now. Would it be possible to work out how much that is, then see what you could earn a week and try doing something self-employed and ONLY let yourself earn that much a week? Or would it mess up the housing benefit too much?