How have Tax Credits been for you?

lucym

Spendless wrote:

Hi - sorry Lucy

I had a mess with the entitled to site and assuming 2 kids no childcare,no baby under 1, no disabilities the family on £25.000 get the same as the family on £45,000 ie the £547.50 p.a which is called the family element.This is what i meant.

No problem Spendless - just got a bit of a fright for a moment

I agree with you - it is crazy that a family on £45,000 gets the same as one on £25,000.

Lucy

magzy1827

how can you work out what you should be entitled to? my partner and i have always claimed as a couple but when i got married the only thing that changed was my name but my tax credits reduced to almost half. how can that happen?

lucym

magzy1827 wrote:

how can you work out what you should be entitled to? my partner and i have always claimed as a couple but when i got married the only thing that changed was my name but my tax credits reduced to almost half. how can that happen?

I have been using the Entitled To site

http://www.entitledto.co.uk/

jellyhead

i thought it didn't sound right that you could get extra money even though you won't be paying for childcare, so i changed my own details a bit to include extra children, but not babies and it said just the family element if i have 1 or 2 children, but when i tried 3 the amount went up, it included child element, when i put 4 children it rose further. how odd, why is there no difference when you have a second child (except when it's a baby) but when you have a third or fourth you get extra money? second children cost money lol!!

good luck with your new job lucy, what will you do about school holidays, i'm being nosey lol!!

jellyhead

hang on, i'm still confused - if you look at the table in the inland revenue link i posted in post number 38 it says for a 25 thousand income you still only get the 545 even if you have 3 children. is entitledto incorrect?

Spendless

I've just discovered same thing jellyhead.

I know that it's been mentioned before that one site uses April to April and the other the current date till April (i think this was how it was explained) but not sure which is which.

jellyhead

yes, the IR site goes on how much tax year is left so entitled to gives a better picture of a whole years figure, but the table i found is supposed to talk about the whole year so how come it says £545 for having 3 children yet entitledto says more than that? is it worth us both having another baby? lol!

entitledto takes a baby's date of birth into account though, i didn't realise that when i moaned about it not giving me the baby element - if i pretend my baby was born on the first day of our current tax year it doubles my money but if i say it's due tomorrow i only get a little bit extra on this years award. that makes sense, i was being a muppet :-)

but i think if i were lucy i'd check this out more fully before starting work just in case the entitledto site has got it wrong, unless there's someone on here with more than 2 kids and an income of 25 who can tell us what they get?

lucym

I have just used the IR calculator and it matched with what Entitled To said - a family with four children on £32,000 would get about £22 a week.

Jellyhead - the link you posted is old. The one for 2004-2005 is here

http://www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/pdfs/wtc1.htm#2

Lucy

jellyhead

i got that old link off the entitledto website lol! so looking at the table if you earn 25 and have 3 children you get 1165 but if you earn 30 you only get the £545. does anyone know the cut off for getting the 1165, it could be 25001, or it could be nearer the 30 mark. even so it may be worth us having 3rd babies spendless, the baby element should take care of any equipment needed and the extra £620 per year added to extra child benefit is more than it costs to raise a child - moneysaving idea to have a 3rd child :rotfl:

but i still think it's wierd that when you're at the 25 thousand mark they think you need more if you have 3 children but if you have 2 children you only need as much as you get if you have 1. why isn't there another amount somewhere in the middle of the two figures for parents having 2 children - if 3 cost more than 2 then so do 2 ... sorry to nitpick but it matters to people like me, especially when we'd be UNDER the threshold if they didn't charge us twice for having a car ... grrr ....

Spendless

A third child doesn't change my amount jellyhead. For me it only goes up slightly on the 5th child, with a big rise if i have a 6th.

I'm 38 and a half - don't think i've got time to fit in having 4 more kids- lol.

Think i'll just stick to moaning instead -lol

BTW - sent you a pm