What?! You are joking?
Tory cuts
- Thread starter commandlinegamer
- Start date
I just heard that on the radio, what the holy ****? Higher rate taxpayers get a tax break but people like me, bringing up a family, working part time with low pay and claiming DLA, have to jump through more and more hoops (if I could jump, that is) just to keep an income of way less than £26,000 a year.
Was it not this story from last night: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11473609
I think the eventual idea is that you get benefits, but they reduce them as you get paid more, the rate of draw back being less than the increas in wage so that it is on balance easier to transition from benefits into employment or to better-paid employment. This would reduce the culture of 'it's not worth me getting work / a better job, I'm better off on benefits'.
This is a story every party has told and every party has tried: it can't be done because the complexity of the means testing means that it is very expensive. That is why the marginal rates for the poor moving into work are laughable: that is what family credit was designed to address: it is what working families tax credit was designed to address (and did, to some extent). The fact is that that idea is so blisteringly obvious that if it could be done it would have been done
This comes to mind:
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
So far we've not had anything new, nothing that hasn't been tried time and time again - from the cutting of (claimed) waste, to the "giving power back to local communities" (which still seems to mean giving contracts to unaccountable private companies), to getting the "workshy" back to work and now "learn a trade" in prison.
richardm
Philosopher
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2001
- Messages
- 9,248
According to the frankly rather baffled correspondent on the lunchtime BBC news, the idea is that "by the end of this parliament" - i.e. before 2015 if we're unlucky - there will be a tax break for married couples, to make up for the disappointment of losing the child benefit.
So.
The position seems to be: Unmarried middle-class people with children lose a benefit. Married middle-class people without children get a benefit.
Marvellous! (Unless it's just a ploy to stop the Express and Mail complaining).
Good way of making sure your policies aren't scrutinised - not having any idea what they are!
I am working, that's my point.
It doesn't augur well for the spending review if they get themselves so muddled up with what should have been a rather simple policy/cut announcement.
But not hard enough - I bet you only have the one job and why don't you move to somewhere cheaper, you can't expect a taxpayer like me to fork out for you to live like a millionaire! Beggars can't be choosers you know!
ETA: The above is a parody of a certain type of person, just in case anyone was in any doubt.
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Lothian
should be banned
I would scrap child benefit altogether.
We have family tax credits stick it in there, raising the threshold as appropriate.
We have family tax credits stick it in there, raising the threshold as appropriate.
richardm
Philosopher
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2001
- Messages
- 9,248
The Tory front bench know lots of high rate tax payers, so it's a great idea.
Oh and it will make poor people work harder so that they can pay more tax in order to get the tax break, obviously.
Lothian
should be banned
I understand tax credits are not a credit as such but a top up payment.
Seems to me a lot of benefits could be got rid of and the family tax/ Working tax credit scheme adjusted to take benefits/earnings up to the desired level. Why do people have to have lots of separate payments and why do we ahve to pay for the administration of each scheme.
Seems very easy to me.
Decide how much of a basic income you want people to have.
Add a bit on (as an incentive) for those who are working.
Have a additional payment for special (medical) needs.
That is your minimum income.
If you don't earn it the Government makes up the difference.
I think you can make good arguments for scrapping child benefit based on pragmatic grounds, for example focusing more money at those with greater need, and of course those on the other side can bring forward their arguments. But what they seem to be half saying (and they seem rather confused about it themselves) is "Don't worry we've cut your child benefit but we'll make it up to you in tax breaks". Where the savings are going to come from is anyone's guess.
I think what has happened is what we see every time a party long out of power gets back in - they find that being in government is a lot more difficult than being in opposition, and they come to realise that it is very complicated. They can no longer quickly backtrack on a policy that gets a bad reception or have someone else saying "oh we'll sort out that little niggle" and so on. Usually this doesn't cause too many problems (the civil service is very good at educating new governments) but when you need to make massive changes to the principles and structures of government quickly it is a recipe for disaster.
From what I understand that is pretty much the principle behind IDF's "universal benefit", and I would support something like that no matter what party it came from.