The Lemon Fool

I was paid £937 in child benefit and for the pleasure I have to pay £1377 Child Benefit Charge.
Damn I feel grumpy and bitter.

You should charge your children the excess...

mjbdreamer wrote:I was paid £937 in child benefit and for the pleasure I have to pay £1377 Child Benefit Charge.
Damn I feel grumpy and bitter.

I appreciate this is Bitter Lemons but how does that happen?

PinkDalek wrote:I appreciate this is Bitter Lemons but how does that happen?

Well, money isn't free. Sir Humphrey's minions have to be paid to administer the scheme.

Reminds me. Sometime back in my schooldays in the 1970s, my dad mentioned how child benefit worked. We got paid £3/week, and paid £6/week tax on it.

UncleEbenezer wrote:Reminds me. Sometime back in my schooldays in the 1970s, my dad mentioned how child benefit worked. We got paid £3/week, and paid £6/week tax on it.

Yes, but that was pre-Thatcher, when tax rates could easily exceed 100%

Did not realise they still can, however.

I realise that 100% is recouped, in certain circumstances such as mine, and that there is a "marginal" tax rate betwixt £50,000 and £60,000 but I don't know how someone ends up paying about 147% of the amount received. Maybe I've forgotten the system, since we no longer receive Child Benefit.

Lootman wrote:

UncleEbenezer wrote:Reminds me. Sometime back in my schooldays in the 1970s, my dad mentioned how child benefit worked. We got paid £3/week, and paid £6/week tax on it.

Yes, but that was pre-Thatcher, when tax rates could easily exceed 100%

Did not realise they still can, however.

My effective tax rate for the year 2003 was about 270%. That is to say, my loss of benefits (compared to sitting at home doing nothing) was not far short of three times my actual income. I was down to one meal a day (of pulses and value-line pasta) plus what I could forage (blackberries into late November when they were shrivelled remnants), and reduced to walking everywhere when I couldn't afford to replace a broken cable on my bike.

Thankfully my own fortunes have improved considerably, but I've met others in broadly similar circumstances since then. The poor are not those on benefits, but those who don't get benefits in their time of need.

The poor are not those on benefits, but those who don't get benefits in their time of need.

Never a truer word. I'm a volunteer at a local food bank. The large majority of clients are people who are eligible for benefits but have not managed to coax the system to provide them with the support they need. Most people who are actually getting benefits seem to be able to manage.