Child Benefit
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Pioneer

Original Poster:

1,185 posts

215 months

Wednesday 24th August 2011
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The initial message was deleted from this topic on 01 June 2013 at 19:20

Eric Mc

124,064 posts

281 months

Wednesday 24th August 2011
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Child Benefit or Child Tax Credit?

They are quite different animals.

Eric Mc

124,064 posts

281 months

Wednesday 24th August 2011
quotequote all
Child Benefit is not and never has been Means Tested in any way. It would be a brave poltician who ever introduced this.

The thresholds for Child Tax Credits WERE reduced recently.

scotal

8,751 posts

295 months

Wednesday 24th August 2011
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AFAIK The coalition plans to remove child benefit from higher rate taxpayers as of next year.

ETA Link http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/5297

Edited by scotal on Wednesday 24th August 10:02

Jonathan27

743 posts

180 months

Wednesday 24th August 2011
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This relay p*** me off. How is it fair that you can have one parent working and earning say £50k and the other parent at home bringing up the child, and they are entitled to no child benefit (yet pay a higher proportion of their income on tax)
Whilst next door you could have two people earning say £35k each (paying only 20% tax) and yet they are somehow deserving of child benefit?
Just because I pay 40% tax doesn’t mean I am rolling in it, and it doesn’t mean that I should never get anything in return for my tax.

scotal

8,751 posts

295 months

Wednesday 24th August 2011
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It isn't fair. This was pointed out to the chancellor I beleive who responded with a "we have to make a decision somewhere, this is where we've made it" statement.

Eric Mc

124,064 posts

281 months

Wednesday 24th August 2011
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Jonathan27 said:
This relay p*** me off. How is it fair that you can have one parent working and earning say £50k and the other parent at home bringing up the child, and they are entitled to no child benefit (yet pay a higher proportion of their income on tax)
Whilst next door you could have two people earning say £35k each (paying only 20% tax) and yet they are somehow deserving of child benefit?
Just because I pay 40% tax doesn’t mean I am rolling in it, and it doesn’t mean that I should never get anything in return for my tax.
Life's unfair. Times are tight etc etc.

We will have to wait and see if they go ahead and implement this change. Since it came in just after World War 2, Child Benefit has alsways been treated as what is called a Universal Benefit i.e. it was not dependent on the claimant's personal or household income. In more recent times there been a view that this was illogical - especially since the social norm of the period in which it was introduced is very different to today.

The argument for it was that it was simple and cheap to administer since everybody with children was entitled to the fixed amounts. If they are going to base it on household income, a whole new beaurocracy of form filling, on-line applications, checking etc will need to be set up - which will cost the exchequer.

What they should do, mof course, is abolish it completely and just have the one benefit in the form of Child Tax Credit - which has been means tested since it first came in six or so years ago.

Eric Mc

124,064 posts

281 months

Wednesday 24th August 2011
quotequote all
Pioneer said:
Eric Mc said:
Child Benefit is not and never has been Means Tested in any way. It would be a brave poltician who ever introduced this.

The thresholds for Child Tax Credits WERE reduced recently.
So I can claim the c. £80 a month now and then stop when they stop it in 2013?
It's all here

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/childbenefit/start/who-qual...

Kudos

2,674 posts

190 months

Saturday 27th August 2011
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I'm in the "fortunate" position of being a top rate tax payer, so will lose this benefit. It's not me losing out, all payments go straight to the daughter and were part of her university/first home fund. Ganted it's a small amount in relative terms, but just another example of chipping away at the "good" things we get from the government while being a diligent taxpayer!

mfmman

3,002 posts

199 months

Monday 29th August 2011
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My frustration with the scrapping of child benefit for higher rate tax payers is (like an earlier poster) that I am the sole income and just get over the threshold so lose the benefit.

As far as I understand everything else, CTC, WFTC, etc etc are on household income (even the huge £90.00 interest we got on the savings in my wife's ISA were included in the Child Tax Credit calculations) yet child benefit threshold is going to apply to the individual.

Much fairer if it was calculated on household income. I don't think for one minute that I would gain here but would at least think it fairer that no household with an income greater that than ours would still get a benefit we will lose. (I currently know this not to be the case amongst several families we know)


ETA

Just read the link provided by Scotal, what a load of bks. Paying it out then asking for it back at the end of the year by dragging yet another bunch of people into self assessment. And the new government saying it will reduce public sector waste shoot. CTC already provides the framework, why not use it

Edited by mfmman on Monday 29th August 10:14