Our tax & benefits system, shockingly biased...

OffTheBackAdam

..against stable, family relationships.
An interesting article was in yesterday's The Daily Telegraph.
Authored by Frank Field, the Labour MP who "Trust Me Tony" (What ever happened to him?) instructed to "Think the unthinkable", thought it and promptly got fired.
A single mother of two, who works 16 hours a week on the minimum wage, takes home fro her wages & tax credits £487 a week. A two-parent family has to put in 116 hours to achieve the same :shock:
I knew the welfare system was skewed in favour of the single mother, but I never knew it was by so much.

spen666

OffTheBackAdam wrote:

..against stable, family relationships.
An interesting article was in yesterday's The Daily Telegraph.
Authored by Frank Field, the Labour MP who "Trust Me Tony" (What ever happened to him?) instructed to "Think the unthinkable", thought it and promptly got fired.
A single mother of two, who works 16 hours a week on the minimum wage, takes home fro her wages & tax credits £487 a week. A two-parent family has to put in 116 hours to achieve the same :shock:
I knew the welfare system was skewed in favour of the single mother, but I never knew it was by so much.

I think you have your figures wrong there- if she takes home £487 per week, then that is equivalent to around £900 before tax - ie earning £45,000 per annum.

jswba

Maybe it's £487 per month? I wouldn't have a problem with that. She'd still be contributing more to the economy than many, many richer people.

on the road

OffTheBackAdam wrote:

..against stable, family relationships.
An interesting article was in yesterday's The Daily Telegraph.
Authored by Frank Field, the Labour MP who "Trust Me Tony" (What ever happened to him?) instructed to "Think the unthinkable", thought it and promptly got fired.
A single mother of two, who works 16 hours a week on the minimum wage, takes home fro her wages & tax credits £487 a week. A two-parent family has to put in 116 hours to achieve the same :shock:
I knew the welfare system was skewed in favour of the single mother, but I never knew it was by so much.

What you failed to mention was single mother has 50 kids

stevechambers34

The benefit system was set up in order to get the 'poor' to save and provide for their future by contributing a small amount every week, it was and is basically just redistributing their own 'wealth' a saving scheme if you like.
I believe taxation as we know it today came into being around 1790 ish and was used to finance the Napoleonic wars, it raised so much revenue they carried on collecting.
The problem is many top earners DO NOT pay their share of taxation, estimates are often around the 2 % mark, to my mind tax evasion or legal thievery is a serious problem and carried out by the lowest of scum they aid in keeping the poorest down and I am not talking about 'single parent' families but working parents struggling on their low wages being over taxed.

Brains

You have to remeber a goverment will tax the easiest target.The poor are easier than the rich, because if you overtax the rich they simply move and take their money with them.

Gordon Brown has learnt this one the hard way, after threatening for a number of years to break the Lamont promise where ship management companies pay tax at a lower rate as much of it is (genuinely) offshore. He started charging them corporation tax in 2005.

And Lo! guess what happened, they are all decamping to Greece and Cyprus where the governmenta are more understanding. Whilst key staff may move, the ancillery staff (the poor) tend not to, so London is now overstuffed with out of work shipping clerks.

End result is of course PM Gordon (as he is now) has lost a pile of money, and will continue to loose it for decades to come. It is better to get a bit than none at all.

The only thing that will get these companies back is if they UK govennment makes another binding promise to fix the rates for 15-20 years at below the Greek or Cypriot rate

Special K

Brains has a point and makes it well.

It's another example of the economy not being a closed system. You pull or push one part and another gives or stretches. Right now the most stretched bit of the economy seems to be my bank balance. Or so Mrs K tells me anyway.

alfablue

spen666 wrote:

OffTheBackAdam wrote:

..against stable, family relationships.
An interesting article was in yesterday's The Daily Telegraph.
Authored by Frank Field, the Labour MP who "Trust Me Tony" (What ever happened to him?) instructed to "Think the unthinkable", thought it and promptly got fired.
A single mother of two, who works 16 hours a week on the minimum wage, takes home fro her wages & tax credits £487 a week. A two-parent family has to put in 116 hours to achieve the same :shock:
I knew the welfare system was skewed in favour of the single mother, but I never knew it was by so much.

I think you have your figures wrong there- if she takes home £487 per week, then that is equivalent to around £900 before tax - ie earning £45,000 per annum.

No, I think these figures are wrong, tax and NI equate to roughly 28% or earnings, so it is approximately £34000 pa equivalent. However, I know from a friend in a similar scenario (with three kids) her income is nowhere near this. I don't have much time for stuff in the Torygraph, regardless of Frank Field's authorship (what the hell is he doing writing in that rag!!!).

wildmoustache

spen666 wrote:

OffTheBackAdam wrote:

..against stable, family relationships.
An interesting article was in yesterday's The Daily Telegraph.
Authored by Frank Field, the Labour MP who "Trust Me Tony" (What ever happened to him?) instructed to "Think the unthinkable", thought it and promptly got fired.
A single mother of two, who works 16 hours a week on the minimum wage, takes home fro her wages & tax credits £487 a week. A two-parent family has to put in 116 hours to achieve the same :shock:
I knew the welfare system was skewed in favour of the single mother, but I never knew it was by so much.

I think you have your figures wrong there- if she takes home £487 per week, then that is equivalent to around £900 before tax - ie earning £45,000 per annum.

without checking, the figures are broadly right. it's an effect of the "tax credit" system. have a look at the Department of Work and Pensions "Tax Benefit Tables " for more. The figures are truly mind boggling.

Jon G

wildmoustache wrote:

spen666 wrote:

OffTheBackAdam wrote:

A single mother of two, who works 16 hours a week on the minimum wage, takes home fro her wages & tax credits £487 a week. A two-parent family has to put in 116 hours to achieve the same

I think you have your figures wrong there- if she takes home £487 per week, then that is equivalent to around £900 before tax - ie earning £45,000 per annum.

without checking, the figures are broadly right. it's an effect of the "tax credit" system. have a look at the Department of Work and Pensions "Tax Benefit Tables " for more. The figures are truly mind boggling.

Got a URL, by any chance? I searched inside the site for "Tax Benefit Tables" but can't find them.

Jon

wildmoustache

Jon G wrote:

wildmoustache wrote:

spen666 wrote:

OffTheBackAdam wrote:

A single mother of two, who works 16 hours a week on the minimum wage, takes home fro her wages & tax credits £487 a week. A two-parent family has to put in 116 hours to achieve the same

I think you have your figures wrong there- if she takes home £487 per week, then that is equivalent to around £900 before tax - ie earning £45,000 per annum.

without checking, the figures are broadly right. it's an effect of the "tax credit" system. have a look at the Department of Work and Pensions "Tax Benefit Tables " for more. The figures are truly mind boggling.

Got a URL, by any chance? I searched inside the site for "Tax Benefit Tables" but can't find them.

Jon

here you go... what is shocking is how tax credits nearly equalise the post tax/post benefit income of familes that have vastly different take home pay. It results in vrey little additional benefit for earning more ...


http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/tbmt.asp

passout

Look at what Bill Clinton did. Reform/cut benefits to push people out of the benefit trap and give them hope. Tough love - give them no choice other than to do the right thing. Put incentives in place in the public sector (councils etc) to act on this and watch the results come in. It takes someone like Clinton (politically brave ) to do this but it can be done. Actually it's easy!

Shame he shagged anything in a skirt!

alfablue

passout wrote:

Look at what Bill Clinton did. Reform/cut benefits to push people out of the benefit trap and give them hope. Tough love - give them no choice other than to do the right thing. Put incentives in place in the public sector (councils etc) to act on this and watch the results come in. It takes someone like Clinton (politically brave ) to do this but it can be done. Actually it's easy!

Shame he shagged anything in a skirt!

I saw a very sad documentary illustrating the effects of Clinton's tough love, it showed single mothers travelling for hours to get to work long shifts in sweatshop conditions for poverty pay, whilst their children suffered from neglect, one of which died on the road when unsupervised. Okay, you can blame the mother, but she was doing what you describe as "the right thing".