Reform of Tax Credit - Lords

[delc]

I don't like Tax Credits, because they are effectively a subsidy for bad employers, who can pay their employees a pittance and expect the State to make up the difference. One of Gordon Brown's more stupid ideas! However now that many low paid workers have become dependent on them to have an even half-decent standard of living, it seems unfair to take them away all of a sudden, as George Osbourne is trying to do! I am pleased that the House of Lords has rejected his plans. They have acted as the concience of the Nmnation.

 

[lex!]

I don't like Tax Credits, because they are effectively a subsidy for bad employers, who can pay their employees a pittance and expect the State to make up the difference. One of Gordon Brown's more stupid ideas! However now that many low paid workers have become dependent on them to have an even half-decent standard of living, it seems unfair to take them away all of a sudden, as George Osbourne is trying to do! I am pleased that the House of Lords has rejected his plans. They have acted as the concience of the Nmnation.

Interesting. The complaint I hear from employers is of the difficulty they have in finding workers, who's primary concern is to safeguard their allocation of state hand outs.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

I don't like Tax Credits, because they are effectively a subsidy for bad employers, who can pay their employees a pittance and expect the State to make up the difference. One of Gordon Brown's more stupid ideas! However now that many low paid workers have become dependent on them to have an even half-decent standard of living, it seems unfair to take them away all of a sudden, as George Osbourne is trying to do! I am pleased that the House of Lords has rejected his plans. They have acted as the concience of the Nmnation.

Or a measure that enables small businesses providing a valued local service to survive and employ one or two folk when otherwise they couldn't and wouldn't.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Interesting. The complaint I hear from employers is of the difficulty they have in finding workers, who's primary concern is to safeguard their allocation of state hand outs.

This I have heard and is fact, the second bit is your opinion and I'm not sure how it relates to working tax credits, the key word being working. Tax Credits are not benefits.

 

[delc]

Interesting. The complaint I hear from employers is of the difficulty they have in finding workers, who's primary concern is to safeguard their allocation of state hand outs.

I thought that one of the claimed benefits of Tax Credits is that they make working worthwhile for those who can work, even on the minimum wage. If employers really want to find decent workers, they should attract them with decent rates of pay!

 

[Tashyboy]

It's hard to make comments about reducing tax credits without coming across as a hard faced prat wanting to take money off the lowest paid, and that is just not the case.

Hendy makes an excellent point of why we have tax credits, however there are people who epitomise why it needs to be changed. They have no incentive to work longer, change careers. Coupled with employers who are quite happy to employ on zero hours and you are stood in the middle of a mine field with a blindfold on.
a minefield that both employer and employee did not create but have taken advantage of.

A monster has been released and needs to be locked back up. What really narks me about the whole tax credit scenario is at the moment it is a " lifetime guaranteed" scheme? Why?

If the Government is adamant that they want to create X number million of apprenticeships in the next few years, then some where along the lines tax credit claimants need to be " encouraged to work longer or lose tax credits". It may well help also to get rid of the stigma of a generation of people who are classed as "don't want work".

 

[ger147]

This I have heard and is fact, the second bit is your opinion and I'm not sure how it relates to working tax credits, the key word being working. Tax Credits are not benefits.

Tax credits ARE benefits, and that is fact...

https://www.gov.uk/how-to-have-your-benefits-paid

 

[c1973]

I thought that one of the claimed benefits of Tax Credits is that they make working worthwhile for those who can work, even on the minimum wage. If employers really want to find decent workers, they should attract them with decent rates of pay!

Well said. :thup:

 

[SaintHacker]

The real question is why are the government going after people who are willing to work hard and make a living, but need a little extra help doing so, rather than those who are able to work but refuse to do so?

 

[Hobbit]

I thought that one of the claimed benefits of Tax Credits is that they make working worthwhile for those who can work, even on the minimum wage. If employers really want to find decent workers, they should attract them with decent rates of pay!

Or maybe a tax credit could be seen as a subsidy to industry. Just maybe upping the wage the employer pays makes them uncompetitive with non-EU imports...

 

[Fyldewhite]

The real question is why are the government going after people who are willing to work hard and make a living, but need a little extra help doing so, rather than those who are able to work but refuse to do so?

Because, contrary to popular opinion there are a lot more people in the first bracket than the second......and consequently more cash to be had off them.

 

[delc]

Or maybe a tax credit could be seen as a subsidy to industry. Just maybe upping the wage the employer pays makes them uncompetitive with non-EU imports...

But they are not making the country any more competitive as a whole, and are contributing to a huge budget deficit. Our big problem is poor productivity, possibly as a result of employees with no incentive to work harder or better themselves.

 

[lex!]

But they are not making the country any more competitive as a whole, and are contributing to a huge budget deficit. Our big problem is poor productivity, possibly as a result of employees with no incentive to work harder or better themselves.

Our big problem is that we have a social security budget of a staggering 230 billion pounds a year, barely affordable by a country 10 times richer, and that we carry a burden of scroungers with no intention to get of their erses

 

[Hobbit]

But they are not making the country any more competitive as a whole, and are contributing to a huge budget deficit. Our big problem is poor productivity, possibly as a result of employees with no incentive to work harder or better themselves.

Absolute tosh of the first water! By eck Delc, you've posted some stuff lately but you've plumbed new depths with this one.

Or maybe you've been around various industries and seen how hard people work nowadays.

 

[MegaSteve]

Our big problem is that we have a social security budget of a staggering 230 billion pounds a year, barely affordable by a country 10 times richer, and that we carry a burden of scroungers with no intention to get of their erses

No different from the 'burden' we have to carry from the huge corporations that have absolutely no inclination to pay their way...

If Georgie boy sought to attack these, with the same relish he does the working man, I'd have some sympathy for his efforts... But, he doesn't... Nor, despite all that he promises, is he likely...

 

[MegaSteve]

...

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

It's hard to make comments about reducing tax credits without coming across as a hard faced prat wanting to take money off the lowest paid, and that is just not the case.

Hendy makes an excellent point of why we have tax credits, however there are people who epitomise why it needs to be changed. They have no incentive to work longer, change careers. Coupled with employers who are quite happy to employ on zero hours and you are stood in the middle of a mine field with a blindfold on.
a minefield that both employer and employee did not create but have taken advantage of.

A monster has been released and needs to be locked back up. What really narks me about the whole tax credit scenario is at the moment it is a " lifetime guaranteed" scheme? Why?

If the Government is adamant that they want to create X number million of apprenticeships in the next few years, then some where along the lines tax credit claimants need to be " encouraged to work longer or lose tax credits". It may well help also to get rid of the stigma of a generation of people who are classed as "don't want work".

All they needed to do was get the minimum wage increasing for all as they want - and tax credits would wither on the vine - and they would disappear all by themselves

 

[Tashyboy]

All they needed to do was get the minimum wage increasing for all as they want - and tax credits would wither on the vine - and they would disappear all by themselves

And that I won't disagree with. Question is why don't they increase minimum wage to a living wage? There is an old saying that I largely agree with.
"pay peanuts get monkeys".
That might be where dell is coming from when he talks about low productivity.
Am not in this situation, but I would find it hard to flog me nads off if I was on zero hours and minimum wage.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

And that I won't disagree with. Question is why don't they increase minimum wage to a living wage? There is an old saying that I largely agree with.
"pay peanuts get monkeys".
That might be where dell is coming from when he talks about low productivity.
Am not in this situation, but I would find it hard to flog me nads off if I was on zero hours and minimum wage.

How do they work out what level of tax credits you should get if you are on a zero hours contract anyway?

 

[Tashyboy]

How do they work out what level of tax credits you should get if you are on a zero hours contract anyway?

If you are on zero hours, I would imagine the individual will not do/ be reluctant to do more than 16 hours because if you do you will lose 41p in the pound. Or another way of looking at it pay 41% tax. As against getting tax relief.
Again it is a vicious downward spiral because the incentive is not there to get off the Tax credit system. Something I think the Tory government has realised eventually.

Thinking out loud, was the idea behind cutting the tax credits a round about way of trying to encourage people to work, or just a way of cutting 4 billion off the bill?