middle earners and cuts

[hogshead]

i'm getting myself all in a stew about cuts affecting `middle earners' but what counts as a middle earner these days????

It seems to be £20-50k household earnings from what people have said on various threads. A wide range but then cost of living varies a lot from place to place and some people have childcare fees and some don't.

I would classify us as middle earners, which to me means not qualifying for benefits, but not rolling in it (eg have to put the occasional expense onto our mortgage).

I read it was ovefr £30k.

Accoridng to The Torygraph, as low as 25k per household is a middle class family income

over, sorry. Should go to bed.

oh bugger thats us then. I hoped that it wouldnt be.

We would currently qualify for CTC but not alot else - i'm going back to work at the end of the month and part of me is thinking why am i bothering!!!!

I think 24K is where they want to start cutting tax credits from.

Our household income is around £60K I class us a middle earner and think it is quite right that cuts should affect me rather than the poorest in society.

if only i could win the lottery . . . .

The goverment will be cutting back on CTC and TC to 25k and they will start to raise tax threshold towards 10k so you don't pay as much on the first 10k you earn instead of the first 6.5k you earn at the moment - but you will not get that all at once it will most probably be in stages.

On top of this there wil be a penny riase in NI tax

Fags and booze will be taxed and VAT will go up.

sorry x post

It drives me mad when the news reporting refers to middle class families - middle income maybe but our national way of life has lost the class system and that's no bad thing - it's only ever been used as a stick to beat people with.

/rant

the trouble is i dont feel (as a family) we are `middle class' . . . . we havent had a foreign holiday for years (we're off on a cheap Sun holiday later this year), we dont own a car between us, we dont really go out anymore (i cant remember the last time we went out for a meal), theres never any money left at the end of the month .....

but i do count my blessings for the things i do have

ha ha!!! DH has just asked if i am posting in AIBU? again because apparently he thinks i am BU!

Childcare expenses seems have be completely ignored. Even if you are on an income of 50-60K which is probably a middle earner, but you pay for childcare you will be less well off than a person earning a lot less but with no childcare fees....

You can't include childcare as it is an outgoing, not something you earn.

I'd personally class middle income as when your income qualifies for the 40% tax rate i.e. £37,400 gross in the 10/11 tax year.

We're all going to be paying more for petrol, more for VAT, more for services currently provided by councils almost regardless of income. I don't think they'd raise the % levels of income tax, personally, but the thresholds might not increase so rapidly.

It's always been that those who can afford it pay for everything (net contributors) and those who can't afford it are subsidised (net recipients) ..... the difficult category are always those on the cusp of both, not entitled to much but not wealthy enough to be entirely self-sufficient. No government of any colour has ever found a solution to the so-called 'poverty trap'

Chil123 - Doesn't the 'net contributor' and 'net recipients' calculation include public services consumed?

A poster on an earlier thread suggested that in London a family could have an income of £100k and, because of high consumption of public services such as schools, health and transport, be a net recipient.

Certainly in London - a 'net recipient' could be easily in excess of an income £37,500.

Agree about income tax - apart from the political reasons - they need to check the last increase actually resulted in an increase in tax take revenue.

Yes, net contribution would be handing over more in various taxes than you get back in either benefits or public services. We all go through phases in life where we might be up or down the scale according to circumstances but, by the end, we'll be in one camp or another.

It's whether the government has decided we're a contributor or a recipient that is more salient.... and that's a relatively simplistic assessment judged by line on a chart. Tax? If you earn more than X you pay this much. Benefits? If you earn less than Y you get this much.

£30,000 really is the worst income to be bringing in! It's not really enough to live on comfortably with high housing costs/childcare/bills etc, but is considered 'middle income'

I'd love to see David Cameron and Nick Clegg survive on a family income of £30k - then they would realise CTC and CB ARE important to these families!

im on 30k. single parent with childcare to pay also (which had just gone up £100 a month) i will be in strife if they reduce my tc's. i rely on them for our food and petrol, i have no spare money for treats or holidays. i save all my tesco vouchers for days out. and yet we are the ones to penalised. so i either have to keep scraping by until ds2 starts school next april or just reduce my hours and claim more tax credits/benefits. So will they reduce the tc before they increase the income tax limit? or do it all at the same time? or make us struggle even more before giving us some kind of break.

We're on a total income of around £34k, with current childcare outgoings of £3600ish. We get next to nothing CTCwise and rely heavily on CB to top up our income.

We'd be OK but for the baby I'm expecting in the Autumn - my income is £27k and to get this I have to work nights, weekends and long long days. The outcome of Tuesday will affect how much maternity leave we can afford for me to take and how long I will be able to BF my baby for. I am more than a little bit devastated that it has come to this. And if we could sell our house and save by renting then we would, but in this property market that's not going to happen ... as it is we're going to have to hobble by on interest-only for a while. If DP could get better paid work then maybe I could take longer but with the jobs market the way it is right now ...

I suspect unless the government is very very careful we're going to see a rapid widening of the rich-poor divide (and I know which side of it we will be falling on).