Emergency Budget: tax credit cuts for millions

SnowWhiterThanWhite

nuttynatty wrote: »

is that £40k how much to earn or how much you take home after all the tax and national ins you have to pay. Bloody marvelous, never claimed anything and the only two things i've been entitled to are child benefit which is been frozen for 3years, (and is actually spent on the children new clothes etc) and the £40 a month child tax credit, which now i probably wont get anymore :mad:

Feel exactly the same!

space_rider

Rupert_Bear wrote: »

Looks like the single mothers will have to go out and earn a crust of bread when their children start school. I suppose the only way to avoid that is keep having children.

Will be interesting to see where all the jobs are going to come from for the single mothers to work. Are there jobs for every unemployed people be they single mothers, married mothers, single men, married men etc.

flight747

Are the disability living allowance medical check from 2013 is for new claim only ? Why the government also do the same for someone cheating on severe disabled allowance (i know many deaf peoples got this for lifetime at £78 a week for being deaf) as I think it was wrong for deaf peoples to claimed SDA. DLA is ok for deaf peoples as they need care 24-7 to communcation need, get help around day and night but SDA - no way!

krisskross

space_rider wrote: »

Will be interesting to see where all the jobs are going to come from for the single mothers to work. Are there jobs for every unemployed people be they single mothers, married mothers, single men, married men etc.

The issue is not whether the work is available but simply that lone parents will not be able to sit at home and not even consider paid work once the child goes to school.

mumofjusttwo

Can anyone tell me if they will stay be paying for some of the child care cost for working parents on low income or if that has changed?

i think presently they pay up to 80%

welshmoneylover

mumofjusttwo wrote: »

Can anyone tell me if they will stay be paying for some of the child care cost for working parents on low income or if that has changed?

i think presently they pay up to 80%

Crikey nora, when I had my offspring many eons ago, I paid for childcare myself *shock horror* parents paying for their own offspring.

Whatever next *rollseyes*?

tizzy333

as a single parent of 2 kids I earn just over £8000 before tax. I could not survive without tax credits and the child benefit is a godsend and every penny helps, so for others it might not matter that it is frozen but for me I need the extra pennies. I have never claimed housing benefit or income support. the healthy eating thing wasn't around when I was pregnant, I didn't get any surestart payment whatever that is. I have worked from when the kids were at playgroup, I don't care what I do but it has to fit around the kids as I have no family to help out and there are not many jobs that are available during term-time believe me so I feel for those desperately looking, it is not as easy as some might think. least of all many childcare providers close at 6pm (well they do round here anyway) so if you have to take into account travel time, forget it.

I don't understand why it's such a big deal that the income threshold is being reduced to £40k. If I had the option of earning £40k I would not need the tax credits...oh hang on, I could use the extra money for a holiday, havn't had one of those for years. oh no, my mistake, the £40k I would be earning would pay for that...

I could not watch the budget any more once I had seen a statement that was running across the bottom of the screen saying that they are going to protect families and children just as he was saying that he was freezing child benefit rather than means testing it and I just couldn't listen to any more as all I could think about is how much the MP's earn plus the perks they get and if we got rid of a few of those and cut down on how much the rest get paid we could save a few quid...

sweetbutternut

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought that "freezing" child benefits meant that it would still be the same as before, just that it would not go up. It doesn't mean that they are stopping child benefits for 3 years.

sweetbutternut

Couple of things I don't understand -

1. Is the Surestart maternity grant still being given out?

2. Changes to Child Tax credit

• removing the baby element from April 2011
• increasing the child element by £150 above inflation in April 2011 and £60 above inflation in April 2012

I'm having my first baby in August - does that mean less child tax credit for my family? What does it actually mean? What is "baby element" anyway? Does it mean that when my baby is past a year old, the child element will increase and we will have more money?

Confused. It was really confusing before, now I'm a million times more confused!

artha

sweetbutternut wrote: »

Confused. It was really confusing before, now I'm a million times more confused!

It certainly is confusing - the whole benefits system that is!

I have fortunately not had to resort to benefits for the majority of my working life apart from when I graduated around the time of the 3 day week etc and struggled to get any sort of job for a few months. At that time the benefits system seemed very simple.

I am of course aware of the names of multitude of benefits that are available these days but have never needed to understand who qualified and how much they were worth and what the purpose of giving them was. With the current extra focus on the benefits system I felt I was not in a position to make any judgements on whether the changes were fair or not so decided to educate myself and can honestly say all seems baffling to me and I still don't know. Firstly, the amount of money freely available to those who don't need it and to those who don't need to work to live comfortably on the state seems unbelievable. Secondly, the range and complexity of benefits/tax credits/allowances seems confusing and must be daunting for those in real need.

Let's hope the current review will simplify things and get more help to those who really need it.