Breaking News: £1000 married tax allowance

Loughton_Monkey

Jennifer_Jane wrote: »

....To me, the zero hours policy is wrong, but if it helps Companies take on more people and helps more people get into permanent work eventually, then we should allow Companies some freedom to get out of this recession.

Personally, I applaud the whole idea. Companies these days have to suffer so much "Nanny State legislation" allowing maternity leave, flexible hours... that it's impossible to cope without having extra flexibility to fill the gaps. It makes perfect sense that they build up an appropriately sized panel of pre-vetted, pre-interviewed people who are willing to pick up the phone from time to time and do the odd week's work.

To develop the idea further, linked with the (currently discussed) issue of 'work for the dole' I would like to see it extended. Or at least to get any money from the taxpayer, every person should be required to turn up somewhere and then (if available) be allocated work for that day. The basic benefit would be paid if no work came in, but wages would usually be a lot higher when it did come in.

Work very usually comes to those that actively look for it. A large number of unemployed gave up looking years ago and simply live a charmed and easy life on benefits. And while they sit year after year getting fatter and fatter, they also clock up their stamps to qualify for full pension... Most of us got up every single weekday morning for 35/40 years. Benefit recipients should do the same.

[Deleted User]

a bribe pure and simple,cameron says it will start in april 2015,i suspect that the liberals will have something to say about that
another tory policy produced on the back of a fag packet at a party conference,will they never learn?

LydiaJ

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Given the high divorce rate, I can see a huge load of bickering over all this. It is quite 'ordinary' these days for X to be married to Y, but X is living with Z [who could also be married to someone else] and with up to 6 years of bickering and acrimony I can't see the £1,000 being sorted out. If X was letting Y have it, and now wants it back, is she going to allow it to go back? What if they disagree? Who sorts it out?

I see this being a problem too. However, if the idea behind it is to incentivise people to get married and stay married, then I imagine it will only be available to couples who are not only married but also living as a single "household" by whatever means are currently used to decide who's a household for things like child tax credit etc, and that it will only be possible with the consent of the person "giving" the allowance, who may revoke their consent if they choose to.

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Personally, I applaud the whole idea. Companies these days have to suffer so much "Nanny State legislation" allowing maternity leave, flexible hours... that it's impossible to cope without having extra flexibility to fill the gaps. It makes perfect sense that they build up an appropriately sized panel of pre-vetted, pre-interviewed people who are willing to pick up the phone from time to time and do the odd week's work.

But zero hours contracts are not like temp work, and a lot of the people who have them aren't just "willing to do the odd week's work" - they would like to work full time and are trying to work as much of full time as they can find. What the company has is a panel of pre-selected people who then have little option but to hang around hoping for work, unable to commit to doing anything else with their time for fear that if they ever turn work down they won't be offered any more, and unable to access anything that requires a regular income - like a tenancy on a home, for example. And these aren't just temp jobs for people trying to get into a particular line of work - that wouldn't matter so much. In some sectors they are used indefinitely for almost all staff below management level, and that's what makes things so impossible for the people stuck on them.

Thrugelmir

BobQ wrote: »

I just find it absurd that the party that advocates less state interference in our lives uses taxation to impose its values on a population which (rightly or wrongly) is getting married less and less.

Sometimes you have to think out side of the box. NU labour spent 13 years creating an unwieldy benefits and tax system. Perhaps going back to basics with more simplified approach is the way forward. The country won't need to pay for hundreds of thousands of public sector administrators to redistribute wealth.

Jennifer_Jane

LydiaJ wrote: »

snip -
But zero hours contracts are not like temp work, and a lot of the people who have them aren't just "willing to do the odd week's work" - they would like to work full time and are trying to work as much of full time as they can find. What the company has is a panel of pre-selected people who then have little option but to hang around hoping for work, unable to commit to doing anything else with their time for fear that if they ever turn work down they won't be offered any more, and unable to access anything that requires a regular income - like a tenancy on a home, for example. And these aren't just temp jobs for people trying to get into a particular line of work - that wouldn't matter so much. In some sectors they are used indefinitely for almost all staff below management level, and that's what makes things so impossible for the people stuck on them.

Many people who have been working as temps are doing it because that is the only way they could get into a certain Company. I used to get a lift with an administrator who had been temping for an Agency but working in one specific Company, for 7 years. Eventually that stopped too. No loyalty, no pension, no Union type rights, nothing.

I don't really understand the bit of your post that I've put in bold. Surely everyone is trying to get into a particular line of work? Why have these arguments not been brought up before about temps? Why is there suddenly now a hoo-ha about zero hours, when it's been happening (mostly, of course, in the jobs done by women) ever since I started working 50 years ago.

The only difference (and I'm not saying it's immaterial) is that if you work as a temp from an Agency, then obviously you work for the Agency. If you work for a Company specifically, on zero hours, then you are working for that Company.

You may say that you are then committed to that Company, but is this so? I have had full-time jobs where I also worked after-hours in a second job (one was a strip club, behind the bar, naturally, but my hours for that were 7:00 to 02:00 or something). I then had to be able to catch the Company bus at 08:15. It wasn't easy.

Similarly, if the Agency had no work for the following week, you were unemployed.

Re your comment about getting a tenancy on a home, well, that also applies to temps, and in particular, I didn't even start the house-buying process until I was made permanent. But you have to live somewhere, so presumably you have to get a rental somehow. Personally, I lodged for the two years I was temping, but families would find that difficult. But you have to live somewhere. Just as difficult if you are temping as if you are zero hours.

markharding557

TruckerT wrote: »

My wife and I are still married and although we remain very good friends, we haven't lived together for more than ten years, and in all our financial affairs we are both regarded as 'single'.

I am no longer a taxpayer, but my wife does pay some tax on her pensions. I wonder if she would be able to claim this 'marriage' allowance?

TruckerT

The fact of being married means you are financially linked.
You are legally each others spouse and have the legal rights that this entails.

You must divorce to change that, this can be cheap if done amicably.

LydiaJ

Jennifer_Jane wrote: »

Many people who have been working as temps are doing it because that is the only way they could get into a certain Company. I used to get a lift with an administrator who had been temping for an Agency but working in one specific Company, for 7 years. Eventually that stopped too. No loyalty, no pension, no Union type rights, nothing.

I don't really understand the bit of your post that I've put in bold. Surely everyone is trying to get into a particular line of work? Why have these arguments not been brought up before about temps? Why is there suddenly now a hoo-ha about zero hours, when it's been happening (mostly, of course, in the jobs done by women) ever since I started working 50 years ago.

The only difference (and I'm not saying it's immaterial) is that if you work as a temp from an Agency, then obviously you work for the Agency. If you work for a Company specifically, on zero hours, then you are working for that Company.

You may say that you are then committed to that Company, but is this so? I have had full-time jobs where I also worked after-hours in a second job (one was a strip club, behind the bar, naturally, but my hours for that were 7:00 to 02:00 or something). I then had to be able to catch the Company bus at 08:15. It wasn't easy.

Similarly, if the Agency had no work for the following week, you were unemployed.

Re your comment about getting a tenancy on a home, well, that also applies to temps, and in particular, I didn't even start the house-buying process until I was made permanent. But you have to live somewhere, so presumably you have to get a rental somehow. Personally, I lodged for the two years I was temping, but families would find that difficult. But you have to live somewhere. Just as difficult if you are temping as if you are zero hours.

I obviously didn't explain myself very clearly. I imagine it may be because the people I've known who've done temp work have been in different circumstances from you and the people you've known, in which case I'm grateful to be informed that my outlook is too limited and to learn more about what it's like for other people. I agree with much of what you say and I'll try again to explain what I meant.

I don't think it's too much of a problem if various sectors of employment have a few temp workers picking up some slack in the system, as long as the temps are a small minority of people who either choose to work that way or only stick on the temp level for a short time until they get something permanent.

For example, I work as a teacher in a school. Most school teachers have proper contracts (either full-time or part-time), but there are a few supply teachers in the profession. Some supply teachers do it because they actually want the flexibility of working when they want to and choosing not to work another week when it's not so convenient. (These are mainly people with some other source of income or a partner who earns a reasonable amount.) Others are trying to build up a CV of experience to enable them to get a proper teaching job in due course. The jobs they do are genuinely temporary - they cover the absence of teachers on proper contracts who are ill or whatever, and when the contracted teacher returns to work the supply teacher is no longer needed. AFAIK, few of those who would like a contract end up staying on supply for very long.

In a different sector, a friend of mine qualified as a librarian. At one point she did some temp admin work for a couple of months when she was between library jobs. The agency she temped for sent her to various places for a day or a few days at a time to provide short term assistance as needed. She didn't want a permanent admin job and did eventually get another library job so didn't need to do the admin temp stuff any more.

These examples of temp work seem to be quite benign, and also necessary to enable workplaces with temporary needs to find workers willing to do the odd day here and there.

In contrast, my friend's son works teaching EAL (English as an additional language, also known as EFL) for a company running courses for foreign young people who come to England for a week or a few weeks at a time. He has a zero hours contract, as do almost all those who teach EAL for any of the companies around here. There is no way for him to get a contract with hours unless he gets promoted to a higher level, and hardly any of the EAL teachers he knows have managed to achieve that. Unlike those who teach supply in schools, he has no flexibility. The company make it clear that if they offer him work and he turns it down, then they will offer him much less work in future.

This does not seem to me to be OK. I understand that this is caused by market forces - people qualified to teach EAL are much more plentiful in the labour market than fully qualified school teachers. But I nevertheless find the zero hours model abusive in keeping a majority of this kind of worker stuck in a dead end.

But then I don't think it's at all OK that your friend was employed as a temp for 7 years. I don't think a company should be allowed to employ somebody for 7 years as a temp. If the job needs doing for 7 years, there's nothing temporary about it, and the company should have to employ somebody on a proper contract to do the work.

If you are saying that any proposed crack down on zero hours contracts should also look at tightening loop-holes that allow employers to take unfair advantage of temp workers, then I defer to your more extensive experience of temp work and agree with you.

Ronaldo_Mconaldo

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Just read the report, and learned that there is no "extra" £1,000 tax allowance at all. Just the ability to transfer it. So (like me) if we both have income >£10K-ish then transferring is of no value. [Am assuming that I would not be allowed to transfer it simply to avoid one of the couple going into the higher rate band.]

Are you for real? They're not going to raise your tax code just because you're married. It's only going to be of use to families where one person works and the other looks after the kids so that the one who works pays less tax due to the other. It won't apply to a lot of people but it won't apply to homes where two people are just girlfriend and boyfriend despite being in their 40s because they're scared to get married

Moby

BobQ wrote: »

Only the modern day Tory Party could try to impose its sense of morality on a nation where marriage is rapidly going out of fashion.

The tories are made up of types that were old in the 1950's....look at the conference hall during the speeches:rotfl:
They are pitching at the so called 'hard working' individuals who 'get up in the morning' and singling out the '!!!!less' and 'workshy'. Couples who get married are preferred to those that don't. It's a signal as to what is morally encouraged and what isn't. Of course you look at the lifestyles of these bigots and see the things they get up to personally while moralising to the rest of us! Same old tory dross and the selfish, self centred and rather stupid amongst us fall for it every time. They fail to understand the quality of their lives/services will be affected by dividing us all up into cliches. No person is an island!

lvader

This is a common tax policy is the rest of Europe, it partially makes up for the fact that it is more tax advantagous to divorce than to marry. It will help many retired couples where one person has most of the pension income.