Budget 2016

[JohnL]

LondonMix Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Can you link to that definition JohnL. The gov

> website says that there is no max upper income

> threshold to qualify as it depends on your

> circumstances-- i.e. how many children you have

> etc. Looking at the official tables on line I

> can't reconcile what everyone here is posting

> about-- not that anyone is wrong, I'm just

> confused

https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/working-tax-credit

In the 'how much you'll get' section

[LondonMix]

Got it thanks. So you still get working tax credit but you don't get the maximum above the income threshold. I'll edit more former post accordingly

[DaveR]

"I agree - people with disabilities need to be properly looked after and I think their approach is very harsh"

It's worth reminding everybody that, despite all the data suggesting that the UK population is and has been getting progressively healthier, welfare spending on disability related benefits continue to rise. In England and Wales the bill for these benefits is twice as much as the total bill for both JSA and Income Support. It's an unfortunate fact that if you offer people who are not working three levels of increasing payments, based on (i) not working and not looking for work, (ii) not working and looking for work or (iii) not fit to work, you create a perverse incentive for people to go for option (iii). Research from all over the world has demonstrated pretty comprehensively that, despite what we would like to believe, human behaviour consistently responds to financial incentives, whether it involves having kids, giving up smoking, or even dying.

[Mick Mac]

Brave man DaveR....

[Earl Aelfheah]

Thought this was an interesting reading of the budget: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/17/geoge-osborne-budget-planning-early-election-economic-strategy-scheming

[DaveR]

"Brave man DaveR...."

"Government attacking disabled people" is an easy headline to write, if you're that way inclined, but the truth is that every govt since the mid 90s has been trying to do something about the cost of disability benefits. The number of claimants doubled from the mid 80s - mid 90s and has been stuck at 2.5 million or so ever since. At the peak, 7.5% of the entire working age population were claiming. In recent times the swing has been from claims based on physical disability to mental/behavioural conditions, with the latter now being near 50% (or 60% for under 35s). You don't have to be very cynical to see a connection between that change and the introduction of more stringent tests - how much more difficult is it to test objectively for behavioural conditions?

[Otta]

The fact is that there are plenty of disabled people out there who could work but don't, and plenty of disability charities encouraging them to be dependent, because it gives them (the charities) a reason to exist.

[Otta]

That is not to say that I support what the government are doing exactly, but the fact is that there are plenty of people out there who could do more.

I am a disabled person, in so far as I am registered as "sight impaired". I have filled in countless DLA forms for people, and I am 100% certain I could have filled one in for myself years ago and enjoyed some extra income. But I don't need it so I never have. There are plenty of people out there that don't need it but take it because they are encouraged to.

[right-clicking]

Sigh!! what will I do with all that money?

the Resolution Foundation, warned that the richest households would be the greatest beneficiaries from next year's tax changes.

From April 2017, no one will start paying income tax until they earn ?11,500 - up from ?11,000 from April 2016. And the threshold for the higher rate of tax will be raised from ?43,000 to ?45,000.

The Resolution Foundation said that would mean the poorest 20% of households gaining just ?10 a year on average, while the richest 20% would gain ?225.

[Mick Mac]

Its each individual's decision - but I think people who are entitled should generally take it, if its not means tested then they should not have to make a decision whether they feel they need it or not - that's unfair pressure.

It's important that the entitlement or otherwise is correctly set, monitored and enacted fairly so the right people get the right support.

People may not realise it - but some people may be earning less through their disability without even realising it and the benefit is a partial compensation for that. Its hard to quantify how much has been lost as a result of the disability and the system puts some sort of a number on that, to assist.

[Earl Aelfheah]

PIPs are not easy to get and you have to be assessed by a healthcare professional. It's intended to help people be more independent - it is absoultely not about encouraging dependency. https://www.gov.uk/pip/eligibility

[LondonMix]

The 11.5k is a bigger tax cut starting today through to 2017. Here's the math.

The current rate 2015-2016 is 10.6k. It is increasing by 900 quid by 2017. The tax savings is 180 quid for every single person who earns at least 11.5k per annum.

There are approximately 29.3 million tax payers in the UK who will benefit from this change. The total change in revenue for HMRC like for like is about 5 billion.

Now remember that once you earn more than 60k, you start to lose your tax free allowance meaning many high earners do not get the tax cut above (which is fine).

The increase in the amount of income taxed at 20% after the tax free allowance is 1,500. That amount that would have been taxed at 40% is worth 600 in taxes. Approximately 4.7m people (16% of total tax payers) pay the 40% tax rate currently so that is a like for like loss of revenue of 2.8b for HMRC.

I think both tax cuts are inappropriate but I also think its hypocritical for people to complain about tax cuts others are receiving while saying nothing of the one they are happily accepting for themselves. Particularly if they also complain about any of the cuts in the budget...

I haven't seen Resolutions analysis but they must have been analysing all the changes in the budget (sugar tax, pension changes etc) rather than income tax changes in isolation. I'd be interested to see the link.

right-clicking Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Sigh!! what will I do with all that money?

>

> the Resolution Foundation, warned that the richest

> households would be the greatest beneficiaries

> from next year's tax changes.

>

> From April 2017, no one will start paying income

> tax until they earn ?11,500 - up from ?11,000 from

> April 2016. And the threshold for the higher rate

> of tax will be raised from ?43,000 to ?45,000.

>

> The Resolution Foundation said that would mean the

> poorest 20% of households gaining just ?10 a year

> on average, while the richest 20% would gain ?225.

[Otta]

Mick Mac Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Its each individual's decision - but I think

> people who are entitled should generally take it,

> if its not means tested then they should not have

> to make a decision whether they feel they need it

> or not - that's unfair pressure.

>

> It's important that the entitlement or otherwise

> is correctly set, monitored and enacted fairly so

> the right people get the right support.

And this has been the problem with DLA, if you know how to fill the forms out, you can get it easily. And I strongly disagree that a person shouldn't have to decide whether they need something or not. FFS, that's exactly what they should be doing. I am not talking about the most vulnerable people here, I am talking about people, like me, who are perfectly able to work and live a "normal" life, but who choose to claim a benefit for people with care and mobility needs.

rahrahrah Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> PIPs are not easy to get and you have to be

> assessed by a healthcare professional. It's

> intended to help people be more independent - it

> is absoultely not about encouraging dependency.

> https://www.gov.uk/pip/eligibility

I never said it (PIPS) were about encouraging dependency. I said that there are organisations out there who advocate and support various groups, and often these organisations will almost disable their clients further, painting them as unable to do anything. It makes my blood boil.

And before anyone bites my head off, I care quite deeply about disability issues and have spent my working life trying to make life better for people with disabilities.

But people that are just taking the piss can fuck off.

[Otta]

Otta Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> But people that are just taking the piss can @#$%&

> off.

Because it's basically them that have caused this problem for all the people that do need help and will lose out.

[LondonMix]

I've seen people take the piss and I've seen people genuinely in need. I have no idea how many people are taking the piss though and if its worth all the distress and agro it causes the honest people needing help to catch out those that are taking advantage of the system.

I don't know if anyone has seen any estimates on this. Otta, how many people (as a percentage) would you reckon are in some way taking the piss?

[Otta]

I do not know.

But I personally have cone across enough to make me believe that it's probably a significant number nationwide.

[Blah Blah]

There is pelnty of evidence that genuinely disabled people are being unfairly hit hard - 80 suicides, thousands dying from underlying conditions within six weeks of being found fit for work by Atos and Maximus for example. So the system to sort out genuine claimants from those who are able, is flawed and deeply so. That's before we even get into the debates on the realistic chances of the disabled being able to find work. Employers prejudice against several groups of people based on everything from age to disability. Nothing is being done by government to address that. The message is clear. If you are disabled or over 50 or Long Term Unemployed, you are damned on every level.

Just on mental health conditions DaveR, it can take years for someone to recover from a breakdown, and they will need specific ongoing support to get well. This is perhaps the most misunderstood area of disibility by both the public and government alike and there is nothing like the funding needed in place to deal with this.

Their continued attacks on the disabled are beyond any measure of reason if ever they were. We can afford to give tax breaks to the top 10% but we can't afford to make sure half a million disabled people have enough to live on.

Completely spot on Jah Lush regarding tax credits and that's why he was so happy to u-turn. At the time it was pointed out that Universal Credit was going to wipe out the tax credits anyway. Now compare this to the ESA cut where the government is defying the Lords - because there is no alternate way to cut them without people noticing.

Osborne has created a hole for himself for sure. The really cynical part is the offset of some tax collectons for two years (allowing them to be paid in arrears) therefore creating a windfall tax in 2019 to try and con us all into thinking he's suddenly come good on his target to reduce the deficit or even send it into surplus. It will be a total con based on a year of creative accounting that won't be repeated in the following year. Deliberately deceptive is an understatement for Osborne.

The real pointer is the increasing fall in investment rates. NOTHING Osborne has ever done has sent that in the right direction. He just doesn't understand that excessive cutting strangles capital investment. He's relying completely on the free market to stimulate the economy and it's not working and hasn't worked for the last 6 years! How long does it have to go on before he wakes up? Does anyone really believe anything he says anymore on fiscal targets? He's missed every target he has set, and now just looks like some kind of fantasist.

Public borrowing is up. Investment down. Exports down. Productivity down. And everything continuously being downgraded. Yet he and Cameron insist they are doing the best job with the economy, not just within the country, but in the whole G7!!!!! Complete fantasy.

[LondonMix]

Hmmm, Otta if that's true, then I'd be generally supportive of steps to reduce the incentive to abuse the system.

[Blah Blah]

To answer your question LondonM, probably not as many as some areas would like to make us think. JSA claimants ARE required to demonstrate they are looking for work. Those on disability benefits ARE put through the governments work capability assessment, and many genuinely ill people fail to get through it.

We could look at the level of sanctions as an indicator, but 63% of those sanctioned are on ESA are in the WRAG - so have some kind of health problem. When people are ill, they can't function on the same level from day to day.

I think the issue is that under New Labour, people became parked for years on different types of benefits with no review - which isn't a good thing, but now we have a system that has flipped to the other extreme. The long term unemployed often have specific reasons for being so, like age, or living in areas of high unemployment. So assuming that unemployment is soley the fault of the unemployed themselves is wrong in many cases.

Unemployment figures also are not ever a true reflection and there's a lot of temporarily unemployed within those figures. If we look instead at the number of people who are economically inactive, that figure hasn't gone down (it's currently around 30% of age 16-64 adults). Of those people, how many are dependent on the state for financial help? I'd have to look for some reliable figures on that, but I think the real problem remains the level of wages compared to the cost of living (and housing) in general and then in turn, the number of people in work compared to those their taxes need to support (which includes the under 16s and over 65s of course). Entertaining any idea that any percentage of claimants abusing the system counters that is nonsense.

And to add, benefit fraud is thought to be just 0.7% of all claims.

[LondonMix]

I hear what you are saying Blah Blah. I think in some communities unemployment is almost endemic. However, my father in law sat on benefits for the better part of 15 years because and I quote "He'd only be making 50 quid a week more working." Part of that time he was on disability for an issue relating to his hands. However, he was more than capable of work. My brother-in law's wife's father was made redundant in the same area fairly recently and has really struggled to make ends meet as the work is very low paying. However, he breaks his back doing two part time jobs-- one involves doing deliveries. Her mother has severe back problems but works part time at a school though I'm sure she'd qualify for disability if she tried.

Despite living in ED, I'm not under any illusion of how hard it is and I also understand why its tempting at the margins for some people simply to choose not work rather than kill themselves working thankless and at times unrewarding low wage jobs.

With that said, my father in law is now a pensioner (he started working at 15 so had plenty of qualify years). The new tests may never have applied to him so maybe its harder now for people to do what he did.

I'm always really torn about this topic because it hits very close to home. Its not just some abstract policy or ideological talking point.

[Blah Blah]

I think that's the difficulty with the debate. Many genuine claimants feel tarred with a brush because of the efforts that other claimants don't make.

But claimants can't get away with doing nothing anymore. And I would still like to think that most people given the choice between working and claiming would choose work. We know there are at least a million people in full time working making that choice, because we top up their wages. And that's before even getting to the tax credits figures.

What hasn't changed though is the ratio of available jobs to those chasing them. Even in London, you will have 100s of people going after a basic job. How does any employer sort through that?

[DaveR]

"And I would still like to think that most people given the choice between working and claiming would choose work."

We'd all like to think that, but the data suggests something different. FWIW, I think the number of out and out dishonest claimants is very small indeed. It's more the case that for too many people (and in too many communities) the incentives to find work are small and the norm is to rely on benefits. If that is the norm then there is every incentive to push for as much as you can get, and hold on to it for as long as possible, and the data suggests that that is what happens.

Tax credits were a disaster for many reasons, but most of all because they normalised receiving benefits whilst in work

[LondonMix]

"And I would still like to think that most people given the choice between working and claiming would choose work."

I don't know. What I do know though is that getting the chance to do work that is meaningful to you is the greatest gift you can have in life. That doesn't mean working for a charity but something you find challenging and interesting most of the time.

I know people who are on benefits and they aren't smug and happy but quietly bitter. We need work as human beings to thrive psychologically. I also know people who make a lot of money and hate their jobs and are miserable.

What I really hope for my kids is that I set them up so they can genuinely choose what they do for a living. Not necessarily make the most money possible but be happy in work. If you have that and solid interpersonal relationships I think 90% of the battle in life is won.

 

[LondonMix]

End of digression...

So what do people think about the plan for all schools to become academies with longer school days?

[Otta]

Bloody awful. Latest thing is threat to end teaching qualifications and let heads decide who should teach in their schools.