Welfare reform - Tax credits next?

Graham_Devon

Child Benefit and Housing Benefit are to be cut down. But what about tax credits? Something big going to happen here looking at the spend?

mvengemvenge

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Child Benefit and Housing Benefit are to be cut down. But what about tax credits? Something big going to happen here looking at the spend?

I thought the new universal benefit took care of that. It works like a negative income tax, I thought? So it can all be administered by one lot of staff, on one computer system (Inland Revenue).

No more complicated benefit, thousands less staff.

Or did I miss something?

LilacPixie

I thought tax credits were already away for 25k plus families

MissMoneypenny

LilacPixie wrote: »

I thought tax credits were already away for 25k plus families

Tapering down to 21K.

pixieland

well if they cut my working tax credit it wouldnt be worth working but we are ment to be better off working?

AD9898_2

I believe Osbourne's supposed cap if £500 per week will include this. One thing's for sure, if this policy comes to pass, the people milking the system by having 8 kids, then putting their feet up are going to be in for a shock, were they planned ? or were they carefully planned 'meal tickets'.

Whatever, it will be a good thing that these people are no longer the 'untouchables' when it comes to taking taxpayer's money.

StevieJ

AD9898 wrote: »

I believe Osbourne's supposed cap if £500 per week will include this. One thing's for sure, if this policy comes to pass, the people milking the system by having 8 kids, then putting their feet up are going to be in for a shock, were they planned ? or were they carefully planned 'meal tickets'.

Whatever, it will be a good thing that these people are no longer the 'untouchables' when it comes to taking taxpayer's money.

Should help the deficit when a number of these kids are taken into care because the parents can't afford to feed them.

Mr_Mumble

StevieJ wrote: »

Should help the deficit when a number of these kids are taken into care because the parents can't afford to feed them.

Cereal and milk (or rounds of toast + butter) for breakfast = 15p
free school lunch = 0p
Portion of chips & half a tin of baked beans (or pasta and cheap tomato sauce) for Dinner = 17.5p
Apple, crisps or banana for a snack = 12.5p

45p per child per day. Parents with dozens of children can afford to feed 'em on, an outrageous, £500 a week.

AD9898_2

StevieJ wrote: »

Should help the deficit when a number of these kids are taken into care because the parents can't afford to feed them.

I understand this and of course you do have a point, but something has to be done, 3 decades ago 40% of people on council estates had no one working in the household, this figure now is 70%. IMO the numbers have been increasing on the back of the benefits system that is incentivises people to have children, the more, the more rewarding is the system.

There is no easy way but it has to be stopped.

Jojo1daffy

There has always been (well since welfare reform after WW2) a supplementary income/benefit to prevent lower income families falling below the poverty line. It used to be called Family Income Supplement. This was 'morphed' into Working Tax Credit. Didn't there used to be a Child Tax Code so that if you had children you paid less tax?? I'm pretty sure this was twizzied round into Child tax Credit and paid directly to (generally) the Mother.
To quote Doctor Gloom - 'What's the point in jobs that don't pay enough to live on?' - I would say it's fact that nowadays most 'average' earning jobs are not sufficient to bring children up on.
In Victorian times working men campaigned to be paid a 'family wage' that they could support their families on without their children having to be sent up chimneys etc. The 'family wage' still does not exist.

mbga9pgf

StevieJ wrote: »

Should help the deficit when a number of these kids are taken into care because the parents can't afford to feed them.

Parents barely "feed" them anyway. Too busy spending money on their filthy drinking, smoking and drugs habits, not to mention their penchant for designer clobber.