All you’d need to do is to get families to declare if they are single or dual-income. Threaten a very hefty fine if found out and 90% of people will be honest.Effectively what they are doing is giving wealthy Londoner dual-income families a blatantly unfair tax break at the expense of worse off single-income families. Bearing in mind the cost of childcare (up to 25k) these dual-income families are in reality couples earning over the average wage of £26k each…
Guiliano I think you are over-complicating it. Every family is currently paid child benefit at the moment right? The amount is on a sliding scale depending on declared family income- the form already has ‘your income’ and ‘your partners income’ boxes. What is so difficult about looking at the forms already ‘live’ and identifying the people who have already declared they are couples? Don’t give them their child benefit if they jointly earn over the threshold then it is in their court to proove they are no longer a couple or whatever. I can’t see any significant extra admin cost in this…
I guess you are talking about Child Tax Credit (an adjustment of tax code paid to a worker in the household). That is something different to Child Benefit which is a flat rate weekly benefit paid (probably monthly) to a parent with care, usually the mother.
Child Tax Credit is always pointed out as being incredibly complicated, full of errors, involving endless forms and refunds and claw backs and under the last Government they were always criticised for being overly difficult to administer and for parents to understand. Also a lot of administration is pushed onto employers so adding to it would only make employers complain more about burdens in difficult times.
Child Benefit on the other hand is the cheapest benefit of the lot to administer and is always held up as being a wonderful example of how to administer things. That is becasue you produce a birth certificate at birth, and you get paid until the child is 18 or leaves school (IIRC). There is very little administration and very little to go wrong. That is one reason Governments have been reluctant to tinker with it.
Linking Child Benefit to Child Tax Credit would place the problems of one system onto the other. Many of the theoretical problems I outlined are the sort of issues that make Child Tax Credits so complicated because your entitlements this year are based on the earnings you had the year before last as well as the earnings you have this year.
Got me there I was remembering the Child Tax Credit forms. Couldn’t they just then use the info they already have on family incomes from the Child Tax Credit system to identify the dual-income families?
They could, but the current Child Tax Credit system was aimed at families earning less than £53,000 IIRC, whilst this new policy is aimed at individuals earning more than £44,000. Clearly there is an overlap, but if you were earning £60,000+ you would never go anywhere near a Tax Credit form so would not be identified.
As usual with this sort of thing, the solution is to get everyone to fill in all the forms for everything. That causes three further problems -
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People have to fill in loads of forms. Accuracy ends up being poor, a lot of people don’t bother and you spend loads on compliance and verification.
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Processing loads of forms (many of which will be nugatory) is expensive.
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People end up being entitled to things they had no idea they needed to/were entitled to claim. For example, people in making sure they fill in the right forms for Child Benefit may end up proving they don’t need to pay as much tax. This can end up very expensive if officials and politicians predict this badly. I have seen examples in my career where a policy to promote behaviour X has lead to Y where Y cost more than X.
I don’t pretend to understand the ins and outs involved in means testing, but I don’t believe fraud would be a big problem here if a huge fine was used as a deterrent, along with having to repay the money and cessation of any future payments should their financial circumstances change.
If a couple are both earning over the high tax limit then the loss of CB isn’t going to make a huge dent in the finances, how many would risk a fraud conviction and possible loss of their job for what is a relatively small amount?
I believe it should be scrapped altogether.
If you cannot afford children, you shouldn’t be having them. Period.
What these benefits encourage is illegitimacy, dependence & lack of personal responsibility. People need to grow up & accept the world does not owe them a living. You’d also get a reduction in the state-sponsored burgeoning mong population which is in itself a reciprocating downward spiral.
The problem with this attitude, other then of course how utterly contemptible and offensive it is, is simply that it punishes the wrong people.
So you have a person who has a child, you cut child benefit and laugh and point and say…ha, you can’t afford to have children you shouldn’t have had them!!
Who suffers? The person who irresponsibly had children or the children?
My money would be on the children.
Also I dispute your ideal that the “world” doesn’t owe you a living, I would say, at least in this country, that the State does owe you a living, and it is this attitude that the State doesn’t owe us anything which has lead us to the tragic state that our society is in.
I don’t believe its contemptible or remotely offensive, you must live in a sugary sweet bubble of a world.
You want to promote illegitimacy, irresponsibility, state dependency – that’s fine, and you have a personal right to do so, but I draw the line at your willingness to give to the ‘most needy’ when those are the benefit dependent, ill-educated, most irresponsible in our society who seem intent on dumbing it down to your own unconscious level. Advocate your system, and you have the disjointed, selfish & obnoxious society we have today. In many respects, your own irresponsibility is to blame, and still you would want the least able, and incapable in our society to breed like rabbits at the expense of the responsible minority who strive to bring their children up under some semblance of self-respect, personal responsibility with at least some ethical & moral backbone.
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Kaos (08/12/2010)
It’s about the parents. They make the children in the first place. :doze: And then these children have more children…
Another point which I know will go well over your head is: there is no such thing as poverty – only too many people. Believe it or not we live in a finite world, and unless people like yourself are prepared to take on your own personal responsibility rather than depend on someone else [the State] telling you how to live soon there wont be much of a world left worth living in.
Cresta you might be missing the point of this thread. It’s not about whether universal benefits are a good thing it’s about whether it is fair that the top earners get child benefit. It’s also about joined-up government. How can a government that say’s it is trying to make the benefits system fairer say it’s ok for a household on 80k to get benefits and at the same time say it’s not ok for a household on 40k to get benefits? As to getting rid of the benefits system altogether I guess you will be comfortable with the result of that if it were to happen. And if one day, through no fault of your own you are destitute and penniless then don’t come to me begging for food and expect to get anything.
Sure its not right one load who can afford it get the handout while others don’t… isn’t that the point? But I advocated scrapping it altogether for the reasons given above.
The way it is at the moment just promotes dependency, and more so for the less well off. I don’t think it’s such a tough one: encourage the council estates to spawn off & you get more council estates.
I’d like to se more responsible adults, not the creation of more irresponsible ones.
How would you define ‘responsible’? Is it responsible to want to inflict abject poverty on people because you don’t want to pay a few pence in tax?
‘Responsible’, by definition is the ability of an individual to be answerable or accountable for their own actions. That’s how I see it. Abject poverty doesn’t come into it. I don’t believe in poverty, per se , anyway… there are simply too many people. If, for sake of argument, you were to be pushed into ‘poverty’ through your own choice in having bucket loads of kids, that would be your choice. It would be morally & ethically wrong of you to expect me to pay for them.
By your argument there would have been no poverty in the Middle Ages as there were far fewer people back then…it makes no sense…:blink:
Who would purposefully push themselves into poverty by having lots of children? This makes no sense at all. If you are using this as an argument against benefits per se then it is somewhat flawed as it assumes that the only benefit of procreation is financial…which clearly it isn’t.
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lessismore (08/12/2010)
No, that’s not part of my argument here but a wider point on poverty in general . One which I added a few posts earlier in the hope of provoking a few comments like yours. Its a much broader issue, of course, and would require a thread of its own.
It doesn’t, I agree, but you did say…
… and I already answered that.
That is not my argument at all, but I can see what you’re attempting to do here.
Put simply it is this: adults who wish to procreate should by all means do so, responsibly, given they can support the offspring they produce without the expectation that others should pay for it.
How would you know if you are going to be able to support a child financially for the next 16 years…you can’t. You are suggesting that people should base their decision on whether to have children on some sort of personal financial projection. Most people barely get by on what they earn and don’t have this sort of decision available to them. Are you saying that anyone without the guaranteed resources put aside to support a child for 16 years should not be allowed to have children?..and what if the partner is the bread-winner and he/she decides to disappear after the baby arrives? You may be in a position and have the luxury to decide to downsize the Rangie to a Mini to set up a trust fund or whatever but it is fair to say the majority of people do not. Obviously expecting the state to subsidise you is wrong…unless you earn more than 80k apparently.
Before or after tax?
That still seems a lot of money a week to me. (for not working.)
I thought the average wage in the UK was 24k mark.My girlfriends sister who lives in Landan is the perfect example of taking the **** out of the system. Her husband has half a leg,other half is fake. Mentally, he is more than fit to work. Together they had 5 kids over an 8 year period.They have a massive house all paid for, she is a full time mum, he is on disability allowance(he still plays cricket). They have a new car, all paid for including servicing. She told me drunk once at a family gathering that not including the house itself, she gets 56k per year on benefits. Her son was on my facebook and said the other day “Oh wicked, Dad got me the new £400 Blue Ray player with a flat screen”…I thought what a joke and deleted the whole family.But moving back on topicish…Why should an 18 year old girl, get spunked in and then get a house for it? and money as well?Why should a person coming into this country with no skills/ limited language be offered a flat?Why don’t families pull together as a group and help each other rather than relying on a government to help?I’m not a higher rate tax payer, nor is my missus. But I struggle to see why anyone who is on the higher tax rate, why they really should get those benefits? If you rely on them, then you are living beyond your means.People live in the fantasy world that they have to have nice things or else its pointless living?Do you really need those 3 holidays a year, sports car and live in a pucker area and the handouts from the government?This year I needed to save money, so I bought a motorbike to get to work, had 1 holiday and down graded from a 4 bedroom house to save me ££££s in 12 months.
To all those flatly opposed to child/ housing benefit for young single mothers:
Basically, get a MacP life!
Without wanting to go into personal details, which are not your business, I would not be here today if it weren’t for benefits from the Heath/ Wilson/ Callaghan governments.
My mother received help from the government to bring me up, I am very grateful for that and not at all ashamed.
Of course, that was then, this is now.
Personally, I would rather work in McDonald’s or whatever than receive benefits and hate the fact that some people abuse the weak & bloated system that allows them to do so, but there are legitimate cases and any kind of complete ban would be a great step backward in what makes the U.K. such a leading light (that the same people opposed to benefits like to shove down others throats/ boast about).
It just needs to be managed correctly - which I realise is not easy.
It would make you think long and hard before getting up the duff tho, mistakes do happen and thank god for abortion clinics.
Getting up the duff is not even considered a serious issue these days, bit like calling 999. People look at that like a service rather than an emergency.
This country is soft and needs a Stalin like grip on it, bring back Maggie Thatcher:D