Child tax credit limit reduced to £26,000

custardy

Double_Dip wrote: »

Received today letter from HMR&C saying that from April 2012 Child Tax Credits will no longer be paid if household income is in excess of £26k (£500 per week) & they have 1 child.
This cap has been kept quiet by the media and politicians, and I find it appalling.
Personally, my income is £26,700 and since 2009 our household income has reduced by 40%. I have worked for a retail bank for 30 years and receive no bonus, despite the opinion of the media. My wife is unable to find work after having lost her part time job because of the recession. Like millions of working people I pay several thousands of pounds in tax and national insurance every year. My wife has also paid tax and national insurance for over 20 years, and does not claim any welfare benefit.
There has been a lot of publicity regarding capping welfare benefits at £500 per week. Why should their income of £500 per week be tax free whilst my income of £500 per week is taxable. Surely all benefits should be liable to income tax.
Presumably there are thousands of households who will be badly affected by losing their Child Tax Credit in April 2012.

not even work to generate £10 a week?
a wee bit of buy/sell on eBay can easily generate that as clear profit

melly1980

SkyeKnight wrote: »

The problem is that work doesn't necessarily provide enough money for the basics - certainly 40 hours a week on minimum wage (around £11k after tax) isn't going to provide for a family of four.

So, simply to provide a safety net you are going to have to pay a non-working family more than a full-time wage. If you give the non-working family £20k to cover the basics then what do you give the working family? You say £9k to make them up to £20k as well since you aren't willing to pay for any luxuries. Where is the incentive to work?

I think your looking at it from the wrong angle.

I fully agree that the issue is that work isnt paying enough and this isnt necessarily the fault of the claimant. The problem is that if people are on welfare have I_Phones, holidays, Sky etc etc then they are getting topped up above and beyond what is required to live. Ie...the top ups are too much. They have to be too much or else they wouldnt have these items. Anyone who is truely on the breadline would not have an I-phone and sky package and a car because they would be sacrificed.

melly1980

I will use an example to try to make the point clear.

A family work and receive a wage....call the wage x. Because the family isnt paid well x isnt enough so they have their money topped up. (something i agree should happen)

After the top up the family now have z amount of money. However with Z the family can afford numerous items that most would call luxury.

What I am saying is the system shouldn't top up from x to z, there should be some middle ground (bizarrely called y in this example) where the family have had their poor wage topped up but not to the extent where they can have all these luxuries that z provides.

lizalloareds

I got the letter yesterday and was surprised by it , we have 2 children and are by no means well off, makes you wonder who the mugs are as you are better off not working.
I know £10 a week isn't much but it helps and my kids don't go to dance lessons or any other clubs as we just can't afford it

FBaby

melly1980 wrote: »

I will use an example to try to make the point clear.

A family work and receive a wage....call the wage x. Because the family isnt paid well x isnt enough so they have their money topped up. (something i agree should happen)

After the top up the family now have z amount of money. However with Z the family can afford numerous items that most would call luxury.

What I am saying is the system shouldn't top up from x to z, there should be some middle ground (bizarrely called y in this example) where the family have had their poor wage topped up but not to the extent where they can have all these luxuries that z provides.

Spot on

birkee

As a pensioner, why do I pay tax on my savings, to support people on £26k per year?
No household on benefits, should have an income of more than the national average wage, otherwise, what IS the point in working?
Why SHOULD the unemployed, live in expensive parts of London? They don't need to do so for their work. Why should we pay premium rents for them?
National average wage maximum..... end of!

Firefox1975

birkee wrote: »

Why SHOULD the unemployed, live in expensive parts of London? They don't need to do so for their work. !

agree with this, and lots of other points here.

The sooner the government sorts this out and all claimants are given a BASIC lifestyle the better.

I think the government need ot redefine what it considers an acceptable level of living. Easiest way to begin would be to contact SKY and say "I tell you what - cancel all these contracts with totally unemployed people in the houses" then they wont need the extra money to pay for this service and it can be deducted from their benefit claims.

simiilar for holidays - "no sorry, you cannot book one beacuase records indicate you should not have enough money to afford it"

The answer to all the above is to get a job and finance these things yourself with your own sweat and blood.Then you wont need to claim - so there will not be any restrictions on how you spend your money.

"but there are no jobs" not true - you just dont want to work for minimum wage when you think the government will pay for you instead. If we curtail how you can spend our taxes you will soon get an incentive to work. besides - you'll have lots of time on your hands cos you aint got no sky tv to watch!

"but we need money to bring up the child" I almost agree - but with a huge exception - you don;t need "money". What you need is the availability of food for the child, nappies,teething equipment, bottles etc. all this stuff should be provided by the government on the NHS. Free school dinners? hell yes! why not.Clothing vouchers - yes!

Yeah its a tough stance - but this country right now needs tough leaders if we are going to improve. The current system needs scrapping to remove any financial incentive from abusing it.

custardy

well to be fair
you stated being too busy to check on factors that directly affect you
however the time it took to post this woud have covered that
its all over the news about Tory cuts,changes to tax rdits,JSA,IB etc,so hardly a secret

gillybean129

custardy wrote: »

well to be fair
you stated being too busy to check on factors that directly affect you
however the time it took to post this woud have covered that
its all over the news about Tory cuts,changes to tax rdits,JSA,IB etc,so hardly a secret

Nasty nasty.........forgive me but I thought that the idea of a forum is to help each other, not make comments which are at best unhelpful and nasty

melly1980

gillybean129 wrote: »

Nasty nasty.........forgive me but I thought that the idea of a forum is to help each other, not make comments which are at best unhelpful and nasty

they were helpful, you have3 choices

1) Stop the dance classes
2) Spend less somewhere else to subsidise the dance classes
3) Earn more to subsidise the dance classes

Option 4 of keep stealing from the state has been removed.