Category Archives: tax credits

In total, Universal Credit two-child limit will put nearly HALF A MILLION children into poverty

Around 450,000 children will be pushed into poverty because of the two-child limit on child allowances in Universal Credit and tax credits.

That’s the prediction from the Child Poverty Action Group about the cruel policy that has pushed 150,000 children into poverty so far – and will impoverish twice as many more by the time the rollout of UC is complete.

Already, 43 per cent of children in families with three or more live below the poverty line, in a country where the overall child poverty rate is 30 per cent. That in itself is a scandal in the fifth-richest nation in the world.

Two-thirds of families hit by the policy will be working, and CPAG says a single parent with three children working 16 hours per week on the fake ‘National Living Wage’ of £8.21 per hour would have to more than double their hours to 37 per week to compensate for the effect of the two-child limit.

Of course, that’s a full-time working week, which means childcare may be necessary – meaning our hypothetical single parent would probably have to hold down two jobs, just to make ends meet; there’s no guarantee they would be able to get free care.

They would be worked into the ground, and probably would hardly even see their own children.

CPAG also says the policy breaches the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and unlawfully discriminates against children, because it treats them as unworthy of individual consideration for entitlement to subsistence benefits – in fact it automatically disqualifies them.

That is the intention behind the two-child limit on Universal Credit, of course: Harm.

The intention is quite clearly to penalise people for having more than two children – never mind the circumstances. In short, it is a eugenics experiment; a “nudge” project – an attempt to restrict the population at large by making it too expensive for people on a low income to have children.

The rich will be able to continue having as many youngsters as they want, of course.

So the comment by a DWP spokesperson – that “the two child policy ensures fairness between claimants and taxpayers who support themselves solely through work” – is a lie.

Doubly so, in fact, because it does not acknowledge the fact that the number of people supporting themselves solely through work is diminishing – because of the fakeness of that misnamed “National Living Wage” mentioned above. It isn’t a living wage; anybody receiving it must top up their income with benefits or go into debt.

This means the claim that the government is tackling child poverty and helping families with the cost of living is also a lie.

As the number of people – especially young people – in poverty increases, one has to question how many people will continue believing this nonsense.

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Jack’s benefits have been cut – now he gets so cold he turns BLUE

[Original image: sei-ten.deviantart.com].

Universal Credit is not the only benefit the Tories are misusing to harm the poor.

Seven-year-old Jack Woods has a condition which means only half of his heart is capable of working and he is unable to control his own body temperature.

It means his family have to heat their house all the time – even in the summer – but the Tories have decided he is not worth saving and have cut his disability benefits, child tax credit, and his mother’s carer’s allowance.

Here’s the Daily Mirror:

The family of a boy whose rare heart condition means he can’t control his own body temperature are struggling to get by – because they can’t afford to heat their home.

Jack Woods, seven, had his first heart operation at just six-days-old and was later diagnosed with the heart condition Tricuspid atresia which meaning only half of his heart is capable of working.

The illness means that he can’t control his own body temperature and is always cold – so mum Ashleigh, 31, has to keep the family’s heating on all year round.

The family have been spending up to £200 a month on heating bills over the summer.

But Jack’s disability benefits and child tax credit has now been cut – as well as his carer’s allowance – thanks to government cutbacks.

After an appeal was made, the claim was denied for the second time and Ashleigh is currently waiting for a tribunal date to be set.

Ashleigh, from Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, said: “They stopped the benefits without any warning or assessment… We have lost around £1,700 a month in benefits and we are struggling to keep the heating on, especially now it’s colder.”

Note: You may be wondering why the image accompanying this article is of a cute cat (that happens to be blue). It refers to a tweet by This Site’s good friend and fellow campaigner Samuel Miller:

Fair comment, I thought. Let’s try attaching images of cute animals to stories of the Tories’ “calculated cruelty” over benefits and see if attitudes change.

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Jeremy Corbyn says he opposes making EU migrants wait to receive benefits


Corbyn is right, of course.

But then, everybody here knows This Writer thinks Reeves was a pathetic excuse for a shadow work and pensions secretary – right?

The comment that anyone working in the UK under the same conditions as everybody else should receive the same benefits is simple common sense.

Jeremy Corbyn has torn up Labour’s European policy, saying he opposes EU migrants having to wait to receive benefits when in the UK.

Labour said in its manifesto for the general election in May that there should be a two-year ban on EU migrants receiving tax credits. The policy had been set out by the then shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves.

But Corbyn, who is in Brussels for a meeting of the Party of European Socialists – a grouping of leftwing parties in the European parliament – rejected the policy. He said on Thursday: “If somebody is working, paying taxes, doing a job just like anybody else, then surely they deserve access to exactly the same benefits as anybody else.”

Source: Jeremy Corbyn says he opposes making EU migrants wait to receive benefits | Politics | The Guardian

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Labour research shows how deep the cuts to Universal Credit will be for working families

Look at that smug grin: Osborne knows he got away with misleading the public [Image: Reuters].

Look at that smug grin: Osborne knows he got away with misleading the public [Image: Reuters].

Gideon – that is, George Osborne – really is a creepy little liar, isn’t he?

He told everybody, in his Autumn Statement, that he was scrapping his cuts to working people’s incomes. In fact he offered only a partial reversal.

The headlines went out, people heard him say “the simplest thing to do is not to phase these changes in but to avoid them altogether”, and that’s what they believed.

In fact, it turns out Gideon didn’t do “the simplest thing”. He just mentioned it in passing.

And everybody was wrong-footed, including the mainstream media (not that they’d have complained, being a gang of Tory-supporting lickspittles).

Now we’re all rushing to rectify the record.

But will the general public even notice?

Labour has released research showing how new claimant families will get lower in-work benefit entitlements when tax credits are replaced by the universal credit benefit system.

Owen Smith, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said research commissioned from the House of Commons library shows that next year, thousands of working families will be up to £2,500 a year worse off as a result of the government’s cuts to universal credit.

“It is now quite apparent that the chancellor only offered a partial reversal of his cuts to working people’s incomes in last week’s statement. Next year, half a million families may be hit by cuts to tax credit’s successor, universal credit,” said Smith.

“This newly commissioned research shows that working families on universal credit still face devastating losses next year. A 23-year-old single parent with two children, working 30 hours a week on the minimum wage, is set to lose £2,500.”

Both the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the Resolution Foundation thinktanks last week said they believe millions of working families will be worse off by 2020 because of welfare changes than they would have been under the current system.

There are 2.6 million working families who stand to lose an average £1,600 as a result of benefit changes due to come into force under universal credit, while 1.9 million would be £1,400 better off, the IFS noted.

It stressed that no family will take an immediate cash hit, but the “long-term generosity of the welfare system will be cut just as much as was ever intended, as new claimants will receive significantly lower benefits than they would have done before the July changes.”

The Resolution Foundation said the changes will cost working households £1,000 on average in 2020 and the losses could rise to £3,000 for some families.

However, the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions hit back at the independent studies, saying it was “completely misleading” to suggest families would lose money, because the universal credit rates will only apply to new claimants.

Source: Household bills targeted by chancellor as Labour raises fears over benefit cuts

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Tax credits retreat: George Osborne means to hurt ordinary people, no matter what

The determination of Conservative Government ministers to hurt UK citizens is breathtaking – literally, in the case of the many who have died as a result of Tory policies.

Having been put off cutting tax credits and raiding Universal Credit, Osborne is now said to be considering another attack on Housing Benefit. He just won’t give up, will he?

Meanwhile, Iain Duncan Smith’s supporters are claiming the latest climbdown means the Gentleman Ranker’s position is secure. The secretary-in-a-state over work and pensions had threatened to resign if Osborne had gone through with his plan to increase the Universal Credit ‘taper’ rate.

And there’s nothing more disgusting than smug Tories celebrating.

Mark these words: Whatever happens, ordinary people will suffer because that is what Tories enjoy.

George Osborne is said to be plotting cuts to target housing benefit to pay for his climb down on tax credits.

The Chancellor is desperately looking for welfare cuts elsewhere after being forced to rethink the £4.4billion cuts to working tax credits .

Allies of Iain Duncan Smith claim they have seen off an attempt by the Treasury to raid the universal credit to cover the cost.

The Work and Pensions Secretary had indicated he would resign if Mr Osborne targeted his flagship universal credit scheme.

The Chancellor is said to have backed off from the plan which would have seen the amount of each pound claimants could earn on top of their benefits cut from 35p to 25p – a taper rate of 75p.

He is now reported to be planning deeper cuts to housing benefit to pay for his £12billion welfare cuts.

Allies of Mr Duncan Smith claimed he had “won the day.”

Source: George Osborne ‘targets housing benefit’ to pay for tax credits retreat – Mirror Online

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Tory’s opposition to tax credit cuts isn’t so wonderful when you check his record

This may seem laudable but anybody with any experience of Conservative politics will know that these Tories have seen the way the wind is blowing and don’t think they can weather this storm.

It is self-preservation that motivates Mr McPartland and his colleagues – not the interests of the general public.

For example, Mr McPartland himself is a supporter of the Bedroom Tax and has consistently voted to reduce state benefits for those who need them.

How’s he looking now?

Not quite as squeaky-clean, I’ll warrant.

A majority of Tory MPs now want George Osborne to drop his “extreme” tax credit cuts, the Conservative MP leading the rebellion against the government has told the Observer.

Less than two weeks before the chancellor’s autumn statement, Stephen McPartland said it had become widely accepted among his colleagues that the £4bn of proposed cuts would “hurt, not help” families on very low incomes.

Osborne is expected to offer some mitigation to the lowest paid when he speaks to MPs on 25 November, having been forced to reconsider the impact of the cuts by a vote in the House of Lords.

However, writing in the Observer, McPartland, the MP for Stevenage, says that only a significant U-turn by the chancellor would now be acceptable to him and his party colleagues. It is understood that HM Revenue & Customs is unlikely to inform families how much they will lose until after Christmas. MPs have only been informed that letters will be sent in “good time”.

McPartland, the MP for Stevenage, who said he had been widely canvassing backbench opinion, writes: “It is clear that a majority of Tory MPs now agree with me that the chancellor must drop these proposals as they stand. The simple fact is that for those families on very low incomes, these changes will hurt them, not help them. The chancellor now has to come forward with measures not only to mitigate the effects of the changes to tax credits but to guarantee to protect families’ child tax credits.

Source: Most Tories oppose ‘extreme’ tax credits cuts, says Conservative MP | Politics | The Guardian

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Tax credit cuts would mean families earning just £4K per year would lose money

Nothing more to say: This Tax Credits advert was intended to warn people to keep up-to-date with information they send HMRC about their Tax Credits claim; now it seems the message is much simpler - they want to stop paying you anyway.

Nothing more to say: This Tax Credits advert was intended to warn people to keep up-to-date with information they send HMRC about their Tax Credits claim; now it seems the message is much simpler – they want to stop paying you anyway.


Families whose combined household earnings total as little as £3,850 would lose tax credits under George Osborne’s plan to cut the amount available in the future.

Analysis from the Commons Work and Pensions select committee provided the shocking figures, which contradict Osborne’s – and the Conservative Government’s – claims that they are “making work pay” for people on lower incomes.

The report has warned that only about one-third of those affected by the tax credit cuts would benefit from the increase in the minimum wage – misnamed the National Living Wage by the Tories, even though it won’t provide enough money for people to survive without claiming benefits – even by the time of its full implementation in 2020-21.

A single earner with 2 children working 35 hours would increase their net income by £323 pounds a year under the ‘National Living Wage’, but will lose £1,701 in tax credit cuts, leaving the family £1,378 worse off overall.

By 2020-21, 78 per cent of affected families would be on average £1,500 worse off in real terms as a consequence of the proposed cuts, the personal allowance increases and the National Living Wage combined.

All of the above means that increases in the income tax personal allowance and the National Living Wage “should not be confused with compensation for tax credit cuts.”

The increased taper rate of 48 per cent under the tax credit cuts combined with income tax, national insurance (NI) and implications for housing benefit mean that many individuals would keep just 7p of every additional £1 in earnings – a marginal deduction tax rate of 93 per cent.

This runs directly against the Conservative Government’s stated objective of making work pay, and makes a mockery of Tory ministers’ claims that a 50 per cent income tax rate for people on the highest incomes is too much; the super-rich would be paying slightly more than half as much tax as the poorest earners.

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‘Evasive’ Osborne must rethink tax credit reforms, MPs warn

Swallow your pride, George: Osborne must accept that his plan to impoverish working people is not going to be accepted.

Swallow your pride, George: Osborne must accept that his plan to impoverish working people is not going to be accepted.

A damning report on George Osborne’s plans for tax credits has demanded that he must rethink the cuts, saying they run against the government’s stated objective of “making work pay”.

The Commons Work and Pensions select committee told Osborne to get his act together in its report, A reconsideration of tax credit cuts, published on November 9.

It stated: “The proposed changes to tax credits in April 2016 will result in very substantial cuts to the incomes of working families, including many with children. There is now general agreement that it would be right for the Chancellor to rethink reforms that went too far and too fast and may have most impact on those in work and striving to succeed.

“Furthermore, by increasing the rate of withdrawal in taxes and benefits to as much as 93 per cent of additional income, the cuts run against the Government’s objective of making work pay.”

That’s an effective tax rate of 93 per cent on extra money earned. Isn’t Osborne the Chancellor who said a 50 per cent tax on high earners was too much?

The committee warned that Osborne was being disingenuous in his claim that in increase in the income tax personal allowance, the gradual introduction of a higher minimum wage and an expansion of free childcare would mitigate the tax credit cuts – make them less harsh.

“These measures are welcome,” the report stated. “However… they benefit very different parts of the working population. The majority of working families affected by the proposed cuts would still be worse off in 2020-21 as a consequence of the Budget package. We therefore welcome the Chancellor’s commitment to additional measures to lessen the impact of the tax credit cuts.”

But there was a warning that any more tinkering with separate policies would be frowned upon, if they were announced in the autumn statement: “In the same way that the increase in the personal allowance and minimum wage announced in the Budget do not offer targeted respite from the tax credit cuts, further such changes are not the Chancellor’s answer.

“The gains are to individuals rather than households and are too diffuse to efficiently compensate families facing tax credit cuts.

“The way to focus on those households is to use the tax credits system. The answer to tax credits is tax credits.”

There was a stinging rebuke for Osborne and the Treasury over its failure to provide information about the effect the proposed changes would have on people in different income groups.

“The Treasury has been unacceptably evasive,” the report stated. “The Government ought… to have been more forthcoming with statistics about flows on and off tax credits. Their obfuscation is not consistent w

ith effective scrutiny; nor is it consistent with effective policy-making.

The conclusion was clear: Osborne must swallow his pride and accept that he can still achieve a balanced budget by 2019-20, without imposing cuts of £1,100 per household in a single stroke.

“There is no magic bullet within the tax credit system,” the report stated. “One of three things has to give: the impact on poverty, work incentives or the cost. If one accepts both that the proposed cuts to some families are too great and that the limits of damage to incentives to work have been reached with deduction rates of up to 93 per cent, then a reduction in fiscal savings is inevitable.

“The Government’s commitments, both to cut working-age welfare expenditure and to achieve overall fiscal balance, are to be achieved by the end of the current Parliament. Their achievement would not be compromised by the phasing-in of the tax credit cuts.”

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Why does George Osborne have it in for the workers?

Matters have come to a pretty pass for the Conservative Party – and so soon after the election! – if arch-Tory Fraser Nelson is prepared to shoot them down.

Not only that, but the target is potential prime ministerial candidate George Osborne. What are his hopes worth now, when he’s busily turning his entire party into a gang of hypocritical exploiters of the poor, just to save his own face?

The Chancellor has run out of good options. He must now either abandon his plans to find £12 billion of savings by targeting the working poor – or stick to his guns, and destroy the Conservatives’ claim to being the new “workers’ party”.

Like all of the worst political messes, it was created by a pile-up of accidents. Its origins were during the election campaign, when Mr Osborne said he’d find £12 billion of welfare cuts and, as a result, run a budget surplus.

The Chancellor never said where he would find such extraordinary savings, because he didn’t know. It was a ruse, a figure designed to be bargained down by Liberal Democrats in coalition talks that, then, seemed inevitable.

Osborne ended up as Chancellor in a majority Tory government, saddled with a pledge that even he had never really taken seriously. But to admit as much, he calculated, would be too embarrassing – so he got to work on the tax credit budget which subsidises low salaries. In other words, the “workers’ party” would be coming after the workers.

Taking money away from millions of working families already on the breadline has proved politically horrific. These are the people doing everything the Tories have asked of them, and can’t now understand why they are being penalised.

No moral thread runs through his plans for working tax credit cuts. For most who claim them, the £9 an hour living wage will not repair the damage. Not only does it punish the strivers, but it’s not even needed to balance the books.

He is proposing to come after those claiming Universal Credit, the Government’s flagship welfare-to-work scheme.

It was designed so no low-waged worker would pay a higher tax rate than 55 per cent. It’s a rather high rate, but as the Prime Minister put it, the beauty of Universal Credit is that this rate could be cut in future Budgets. His Chancellor, however, disagrees. The Treasury demanded that the first workers on Universal Credit would face an eye-watering effective tax rate of 65 per cent. And now, to pay for a partial retreat on tax credits, the Chancellor is planning to take this to 75 per cent – and perhaps even higher.

Such a high rate, of course, destroys the whole point of Universal Credit. The low-waged would be swapping one welfare trap for another.

How will a Tory Chancellor, with ambitions to be a Tory Prime Minister, explain why he is raising taxes on poorest workers – especially after lowering taxes for the richest?

Yet again, we can see the Chancellor’s biggest political weakness – he is so clever that he’s downright stupid.

The thrust of his reforms flies in the face of everything the Conservatives purport to stand for.

Source: Why does George Osborne have it in for the workers? – Telegraph

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George Osborne’s latest tax scandal proves he is a con-artist, not a Chancellor | The Canary

George Osborne is running a grand experiment on trickle-up economics, by paying for tax cuts for the wealthy, with welfare and services cuts to everyone else. While his experiment has proven to be morally, and literally, bankrupt, he continues to crow success. This makes George Osborne a con-artist, not a Chancellor.

In February of this year, the Chancellor told the House of Commons:

“I am happy anytime to answer for our record on tackling tax evasion”

At his own invitation then, we’d like Mr Osborne to answer for this record.

We would like to know why the Osborne family business in which the Chancellor holds shares – Osborne and Little – has paid zero corporation tax in the last 7 years. According to a report by Private Eye, Osborne and Little paid no Corporation Tax on earnings of nearly £200m. In fact, they actually received £12,000 of public money from the government in the form of tax credits.

We would also like to know why the Chancellor continues to reduce tax revenues from the wealthiest corporations and individuals in the country, and pays for them by cutting welfare and investment in public services.

  • By cutting Corporation Tax from 28% to 18%, Mr Osborne costs the Treasury £8bn a year by 2016-17
  • By granting tax relief to Capital Gains for the benefit of buy-to-let landlords, Mr Osborne costs the Treasury £5.2bn a year
  • By signing up to the Swiss Bank Tax Evasion deal which granted amnesty to known tax avoiders, Mr Osborne cost the Treasury of taxes liable on £78bn of assets in over 30,000 accounts.

The Chancellor has attempted to pay for these cuts in revenue by cutting welfare and services for the middle class, the working poor, and people who are sick, disabled, elderly, or otherwise in need of support from public funds.

To put these figures in perspective, the entire annual bill for Jobseeker’s Allowance is £4.9bn. Mr Osborne’s Corporation Tax cut cost the nation’s purse nearly TWICE the cost of providing welfare payments to every single unemployed person in Britain.

The Bedroom Tax could have been avoided entirely. Inside Housing reported that 660,000 social housing tenants, two thirds of which will contain a person with a disability, lost between £520-1300 a year. This hardship is estimated to save the Treasury just £360m a year, an amount that could have been paid for more than 22 times over by the Corporation Tax the Chancellor cut.

The stalled cuts to Working Tax Credits which will leave Britain’s poorest families at least £1,300 a year worse off are purported to save £4.5bn a year. The Chancellor made a choice to get that money from the UK’s poorest people rather than shelve his tax relief for the Capital Gains made by buy-to-let Landlords.

Source: George Osborne’s latest tax scandal proves he is a con-artist, not a Chancellor | The Canary

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