Stay at home parents are non persons.

conradmum

Speaking as a working mum, I do think that the married person's tax allowance should be reintroduced. It seems very unfair that a couple effectively halve their tax allowance if one of them decides not to take paid employment.

Carmina_Piranha_3

aren't the *cough* tories talking about giving the working partner the tax allowance of a non-working partner?

i'd be happy with that.

off topic but single parents do a really hard job and staying at home is not especially lucrative - they would be better off in part time work on tax credits so in effect they are choosing to stay at home for less money because they think it benefits their family unit, in much the same way as i do. i have a husband coming home from work each day to help me clean up the sick though (my children are both ill at the moment).

incidentally the government DOES pay stay at home mums if their partner is earning less than around 25k i think it is, because they get tax credits for having a low income. nobody says 'well you wouldn't be on a low income if you both worked'' and refuses to pay out - the money is given based on income alone, with no suggestion that the SAHP could get a job, or the working parent could work extra hours or a second job.

Spendless

Carmina_Piranha wrote:

aren't the *cough* tories talking about giving the working partner the tax allowance of a non-working partner?

Are they?? Don't suppose anyone has a link. My husbands tax code came thru yesterday, another negative one to the tune of about £3k, so we don't actually have any income we are not taxed on. Meanwhile my personal allowance of around £5K is unused due to not working.

Carmina_Piranha_3

http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=132634

i found this one. it was mentioned at conference a couple of months ago but i don't know if they are saying it will definitely happen if they get in, or just something they were thinking about. i saw it mentioned on MSE actually, i'm not much into politics

allycat999

I also think that my husband should be able to use my tax allowance, i also think that we should get a reduction in the council tax.
On a positive note all our savings are in my name and we get gross interest - yah!!

Carmina_Piranha_3

no savings. but the overdraft is in my name :rotfl:

i'm all for the tax allowance being transferable. but not sure about council tax - if we're all staying at home but we don't get any financial help doesn't that mean our husbands earn 25-ish or more? if they earned minimum wage we'd be getting help with council tax etc.

tax credits don't calculate things fairly though do they. you can have 2 couples on the same gross income but in one couple they both work and in the other couple only one of them works. they would get the same amount of tax credits yet the couple where both work are getting more net income because they both have a tax-free allowance.

Lillibet_2

Carmina_Piranha wrote:

incidentally the government DOES pay stay at home mums if their partner is earning less than around 25k i think it is, because they get tax credits for having a low income. nobody says 'well you wouldn't be on a low income if you both worked'' and refuses to pay out - the money is given based on income alone, with no suggestion that the SAHP could get a job, or the working parent could work extra hours or a second job.

This is incorrect, my husband earns only £20K and all we get is the staturatoy child benefit & family tax credit (which may be what you are referring to) BUT the amount of FTC we get would be the same whether earning £20K or £45K or even more (not sure exactly where the "drop" line is when it reduces) but there is one hell of a difference between earning £20k or £45K!! Effectively by putting everyone earning under £50K salary in one bracket they are saying you are on a low income earning less than £50K then? I would not conser a £45K salary low and it is a world away from £20K.

I don't want to be paid for being a SAHM as that is my choice, but I would like to see my tax allowance transferable, at least whilst my child is too young to enter full time education then pro-ratered until he is 16.

Carmina_Piranha_3

i may be incorrect, does anyone have any figures? how many children do you have? how much tax credit do you get? i've only looked into it from my own perspective but i'm pretty sure that if we earned a couple of pounds less (or they didn't have the unfair rule about the company car) we would get more. we're on 25-ish.

if you're on 20k a year wouldn't you get extra child tax credit? and the surestart maternity grant of £500 per baby too? on a 25k-ish income we get a tenner a week in family element of tax credit, it's the same whether we have one child or two but i believe it would rise slightly if we had 3 or more children.

filigree_2

I know that everybody's circumstances are different but I disagree that a hypothetical family with a single income are financially worse off than we are, presuming both families have the same gross income.

We have two incomes now and gross over £40K, and probably pay less tax than a family where the husband (or even wife) earn £40K while the spouse stays at home. Why the heck not? With 70-odd hours of paid work every week we darn well expect more money than a family where only one person is earning! All we "gain" is 22% of £5000 which is £1100 - and that is immediately wiped out by my travel expenses at £1200 a year :eek: We don't qualify for a penny in childcare subsidies so I don't see how I'm being coerced/bribed/whatever into getting a job - the only financial reward is my salary.

I'm not complaining because I'm happy to work and we have a comfortable income , but I just wanted to point out another aspect of the debate using my household as an example.

Carmina_Piranha_3

https://www.entitledto.com says a couple where one works full time for 20k (i didn't put anything in for pension) and the other stays at home (no work, no childcare costs) will get 838.60 a year in tax credit which is £16.08 per week. if you have 2 children you will get £2605.20 tax credit which is £49.96 a week. in both cases you will get £500 grant for having a baby and can also get a funeral grant.

the same couple where the worker earns 26k will get £547.50 which is £10.50 per week for one child, the same for two children. an income of 50k gives the same results as the income of 26k (and it's falsely telling me they can get a surestart grant and funeral grant).

according to these figures if you only earn 20k you will get paid extra - an extra £290.10 if you have one child (on top of what the family earning 26k would get) or if you have two children you'd get more than 2k extra - that's 50 quid a week instead of ten.

if you're not getting more than the family element of £10.50 per week it may be worth checking with tax credits.