working tax credit age

BigAunty

mazza111 wrote: »

.. I really don't see the difference between an 20 YO and a 25YO who are both in the same position financially and running their own homes.

On a personal level, there's no difference in expenditure for people of different ages in similar domestic set ups with a similar income.

On a national level, what kind of message is sent out about personal responsibility, drive, self reliance and ambition if a person is permitted to receive a slew of state benefits the moment they leave school and start full time work? That's just encouraging dependency from the off.

How does it encourage part timers to move into full time employment if they can earn similar sum through state subsidies than those working twice the time as themselves?

How would this encourage people to apply for or accept promotions if they just think that they'll not get any more money in their hand because their HB and tax credits and council tax benefits are reduced?

There's a lot wrong with high property prices and low wages that affects working people's standard of living but it's a shame that the main route out of poverty should be through employment but this gets corrupted

Marisco

SingleSue wrote: »

Blimey, at 23 I had had my first child and had a mortgage for 3 years!

My daughter was 4 and we had a mortgage for 3 years as well But to be fair, it was easier then, I know some won't agree, but looking back to how it is now, it was! I think expectations were less, we didn't have a washing machine until my son was 2, and I'd had enough of hand washing everything, no phone either! And we bought our first car off my uncle for 50 quid!! These days everyone wants everything now!! What took us years to accumulate, many want to start off with it iyswim!!

midnight_express

Hammyman wrote: »

No. There has to be a line drawn somewhere and that is where the line is drawn. If you're renting see if you can get housing benefit.


No, really? Welcome to the real adult world where that is what you are expected to do.

Unless you've got children then you can rake in the benefits.

mazza111

BigAunty wrote: »

On a personal level, there's no difference in expenditure for people of different ages in similar domestic set ups with a similar income.

On a national level, what kind of message is sent out about personal responsibility, drive, self reliance and ambition if a person is permitted to receive a slew of state benefits the moment they leave school and start full time work? That's just encouraging dependency from the off.

How does it encourage part timers to move into full time employment if they can earn similar sum through state subsidies than those working twice the time as themselves?

How would this encourage people to apply for or accept promotions if they just think that they'll not get any more money in their hand because their HB and tax credits and council tax benefits are reduced?

There's a lot wrong with high property prices and low wages that affects working people's standard of living but it's a shame that the main route out of poverty should be through employment but this gets corrupted

Excuse me, my daughter was working full time, travelling an hour and a half each way to get to work.

There's a lot wrong with the system, but this age one seems ridiculous. What kind of message does it send if people are working their asses off from the age of 18 - 25, we'll let you struggle financially for 7 years before you get the same help as the person next door to you? I'm sorry, I do agree the system needs changing, how to do it i'm unsure, but I do think this one is really unfair. For a lot of young people, the only thing they can get to start off is a minimum wage job. Why should people of this age be worse off than a 25 year old in the same job with the same wage and same housing situation? It just doesn't make sense

Hammyman

roddyolley wrote: »

No, really? Welcome to the real adult world where that is what you are expected to do.

Excuse me i don't mind paying my way i just want some help i do a extremly hard but satisfying job and all i wanted to know is if i can get any help. Don't patronise me hammyman.

Apparently you do seem to mind paying your own way otherwise you'd not be saying its not fair that you can't get tax credits under 25. It isn't up to the taxpayer to pick up the shortfall because your "dream job" doesn't pay a liveable wage. Perhaps before you decided to leave home you should have thought about what it would cost and how you intended to fund that.

The default train of thought should be how are you going to support yourself, not how can the state pay for you to live the life you want.

Witchfinder_General

I am so glad that the Benefits Gravy Train is slowing down. I have never had a beef with all those people who are genuine.

The silent majority think the cuts and/or shakeup doesn't go far enough.

How I wish I could have a say where my hard earned income tax is spent. It certainly would not go towards Cit_k and his drones.

BigAunty

mazza111 wrote: »

..Why should people of this age be worse off than a 25 year old in the same job with the same wage and same housing situation? It just doesn't make sense

Why should a school leaver expect to have the same standard of living as someone who has been working 7 years longer, for example?

Why should someone new to employment who is paying virtually nothing in the way of NI and tax into the system expect taxpayers to subsidise them from the off?

I know the age threshold for tax credits is arbitrary - a line drawn in the sand - and it could be 20 or it could be 30 years of age.

I think it is dreadful to increase expectations in the young that the state should support them, cushioning them from economic reality right at the start of their working life.

Their primary aim should be to achieve this by work longer, finding a better paying job, getting an extra job on top, budgeting effectively from existing wages and so on, not just to gain this through the passive receipt of benefits.

To give out tax credits to the very young is tantamount to killing their appetite to better themselves through their own efforts.

A 24 year old and a 25 year old can and do experience economic inequality on the same income because of current LHA and Tax Credit rules.

But then those entirely out of the benefit system also routinely experience economic inequality because their salaries and perks and expenses will be vastly different.

Among my group of similar aged friends in employment, we span from low income students, middle income people in lodgings, to highly paid IT professionals who are mortgage free. In no way shape or form do the lesser paid ones feel bitter about the very common disparity in the status of their housing and salary and work hours. Life is not fair...

MissMoneypenny

BigAunty wrote: »

If your 9k wage is a gross wage (it's not clear if you mean net or gross) then you are only working part time as a person on the NMW gets around 11-12k.

If you want your money to go further, your options are to get a better paid job and/or reduce your living expenses. These were the only options prior to the introduction of tax credits because when I was your age, I held a full time job and a part time job on top of it, working around 50-55 hours per week,

A lot of people work 50 hours a week now, as a basic full time job. At minimum wage, that is nearly 16k pa.

mazza111

You can scream til you're blue in the face, it won't make me believe that this one is fair on the youngsters that who, sometimes, through no fault of their own, find themselves out living away from home working all the hours that god sent to give them a half decent wage shouldn't be entitled to it the same as a 25 year old. They have no differences in expenditure, therefore IMHO they should be treated the same.

I've seen too many kids try and try to get work up here in the evil north, who end up on minimum wage, no matter what they do, what they try to achieve.

As I've previously stated I do believe the benefits system needs a work over, but find this one totally unfair to those kids.

BigAunty

If I catch a bus tomorrow morning, there will be 70 plus people whose status spans all socio-economic groups and types of housing tenure and living standards and attitudes to money and different levels of happiness. That's the rich tapestry of life.

The benefits system was originally set up as a temporary safety net to give subsistence support to the very neediest. We ended up with a tax credit system where 90% of families, yes, 90%! qualify for some kind of support and where employees do not pay enough in PAYE to fund for the benefits that are spent.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/taxcredits/start/who-qualifies/what-are-taxcredits.htm

We ended up with a sickness benefit where in some cities, one in five people of working age were deemed too ill to work despite the huge advances in medicine and rises in health standards.

We hid the real extent of employment by expanding education, bribing people into studying with EMA and the expansion of University places, parking people on sickness/disability benefits, allowing lone parents to opt out of the workforce until their youngest child turned 16, giving tax credits to the part time employed and the low profit self employed and so forth.

Now we actually get fit young healthy men and women moan that they don't get a fully state funded private property to themselves and that their low paid or part time employment doesn't catapult them into tax credits, seemingly oblivious that it requires people to earn taxes to pay for them in the first place.

The problem with some of the benefits system is that it has become a long term prop instead of a short term safety net, a right that is demanded to satisfy lifestyle/consumer living rather than basic needs. It has evolved into a beast where some households passively reap far more from the public purse than they can ever earn in employment, that their quality of living exceeds those that are in employment.