FG on Child Benefit (Subsidy for sex)

mickuhaha

mickuhaha wrote: »

Wait until people realise how much single parents get and all the benefits they get. I have a neighbour who said she wishes she didn't get married before she had the kids. She could have been way better off.

Other then One Parent Family Payment, which ceases when the youngest child is age 7, please post links to all extra benefits you seem to believe that single parents receive, over and above everyone else.

Thanks.

mickuhaha

meeeeh wrote: »

Well your neighbour has obviously no ambition and neither has her husband to ever earn a decent wage.

Ha ha no. She and her husband were let go in the last crash with a mortgage. She was working with 3 kids and back in college part time training to be a nurse. He is an engineer now. I think she ment she would have had an easier time as if she was a single parent she could have got to do it full time with a payment and could have applied for extra grants and childcare.

mickuhaha

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Other then One Parent Family Payment, which ceases when the youngest child is age 7, please post links to all extra benefits you seem to believe that single parents receive, over and above everyone else.

Thanks.

Go look it up.

mickuhaha

mickuhaha wrote: »

Go look it up.

Oh, I already know.

I just wanted to see if you could back up your claims.

Which clearly, you can't.

sameoldname

I've always wondered why they don't scrap tax breaks for married couples and give them to people who have kids instead. So say you get more tax relief for every child below 18 years of age up to a maximum of 3 children. That way single parents get the benefit too and you encourage people to have enough kids to replace the aging population.

mickuhaha

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Oh, I already know.

I just wanted to see if you could back up your claims.

Which clearly, you can't.

Why don't you have a kid, separate from the partner, take them for maintenance, get your single parents and then ask the department of social protection and department of education as to what benefits you can get. While you're at it you could contact the local council and get your 3 bed before all the rest on the housing list.

Sadler Peak

Mickey Tuesday money

shesty

I think you should be able to chose whether you want child benefit in cash form or in the form of some sort of tax credit or childcare credit.

Point to note btw, that the whole point of child benefit is that it is paid specifically to the mother of children and not to the fathers, unless specified.Recognition that often income is not distributed evenly in households, and that the mother does most of the child-rearing.So I do think that in changing child benefit you would have to account of both working and non-working mothers and offering a choice of cash vs credits might be better.

KaneToad

Padraig Mor wrote: »

It doesn't. It's automatically set up when a baby is assigned a PPS number. There is no mechanism to say you don't want it.

You have to apply for it to get it. How else would it end up in your bank a/c or into your hands?

Jizique

[Deleted User] wrote: »

OP, how do you suppose your pension will be paid if there's no young people to pay taxes?

This is the biggest fallacy in economics

The DayDream

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Other then One Parent Family Payment, which ceases when the youngest child is age 7, please post links to all extra benefits you seem to believe that single parents receive, over and above everyone else.

Thanks.

There's no point telling these people the facts. They have it in their head that there's a bunch of tracksuit wearing single mums living the high life on their dime while they slave away, and there's nothing that will convince them otherwise.

When you ask why they don't give up their job to avail of the aforementioned high life, they'll proudly proclaim that they weren't raised to be a layabout or something along those lines.

I don't understand these people, I've come to the conclusion they're just thick or cowardly or both. I mean, it should be obvious that it's the rich folks screwing over the middle class worker not the poor folks, and that keeping the worker bees angry at the dolies instead of the capitalist barons and corporate board rooms is part of their game, but I think they just find it much much easier to punch down, so that's what they do.

Antares35

shesty wrote: »

I think you should be able to chose whether you want child benefit in cash form or in the form of some sort of tax credit or childcare credit.

Point to note btw, that the whole point of child benefit is that it is paid specifically to the mother of children and not to the fathers, unless specified.Recognition that often income is not distributed evenly in households, and that the mother does most of the child-rearing.So I do think that in changing child benefit you would have to account of both working and non-working mothers and offering a choice of cash vs credits might be better.

True. When I was on mat leave my net take home was around 400 a month less. The 140 helped cover the gap a little I don't recall my fiancé offering to split the gap, notwithstanding that it was our child I was taking care of, so there is definitely an economic independence factor to consider.

KaneToad

Do you not manage your finances jointly? I thought most people did. Obviously not!

Antares35

KaneToad wrote: »

Do you not manage your finances jointly? I thought most people did. Obviously not!

We split the big ticket items between us - rent, mortgage savings, bills, childcare etc. What's leftover is our own. It works for us because we feel we've more autonomy I suppose. Like if I've X left over after we pay the overheads, I know I can do whatever I want with that, and OH the same.

KaneToad

Antares35 wrote: »

We split the big ticket items between us - rent, mortgage savings, bills, childcare etc. What's leftover is our own. It works for us because we feel we've more autonomy I suppose. Like if I've X left over after we pay the overheads, I know I can do whatever I want with that, and OH the same.

Excuse the probing, but do you usually split 50/50 or proportionally based on net pay?

Dempo1

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Other then One Parent Family Payment, which ceases when the youngest child is age 7, please post links to all extra benefits you seem to believe that single parents receive, over and above everyone else.

Thanks.

Great response to an absurd, ill informed and typical SW bashing response.

Antares35

KaneToad wrote: »

Excuse the probing, but do you usually split 50/50 or proportionally based on net pay?

No problem! We split 50:50 but we are lucky we are on around the same pay anyway. I can completely see how a 50:50 split might lead to unfairness if there was a big disparity between our net take home. Though to be fair to him, I was carrying some debt for a while (I'd gone back to college later in life and the fees were pretty big, and at the time I wasn't in my current role so was earning less) and he helped me clear those as we wanted to both be debt free before the babba came along. So, he has his ways

Dempo1

mickuhaha wrote: »

Why don't you have a kid, separate from the partner, take them for maintenance, get your single parents and then ask the department of social protection and department of education as to what benefits you can get. While you're at it you could contact the local council and get your 3 bed before all the rest on the housing list.

Disgraceful!

meeeeh

mickuhaha wrote: »

Ha ha no. She and her husband were let go in the last crash with a mortgage. She was working with 3 kids and back in college part time training to be a nurse. He is an engineer now. I think she ment she would have had an easier time as if she was a single parent she could have got to do it full time with a payment and could have applied for extra grants and childcare.

As far as I know extra grants were available to married people too and so was transfer of tax credits if only one of them was working. One parent families are most likely living in poverty in Ireland so if that's an aspiration then go ahead.

Yes some people abuse the system but constant whinging how some people get everything for free and live in huge luxury is just whinging and not based on any real data.

Geuze

Deleted User wrote: »

Other then One Parent Family Payment, which ceases when the youngest child is age 7, please post links to all extra benefits you seem to believe that single parents receive, over and above everyone else.

Thanks.

A lone parent can get:

• OPFP
• QCI
• wages from a job - they can keep some or part of QCI and earn up to a point
• an extra tax credit
• WFP

as well as the normal Child Benefit.

Plus maybe HAP, and maybe GMS medical card.

Tilden Katz

Zookey123 wrote: »

David McManus recently on the radio claimed that child benefit should be means tested. He also made a subsidy for sex comment which I assume was just to grab peoples attention. I actually do agree with a lot he had to say. I personally don't even understand why parents get massive tax credits for having kids. Surely as a family with children your using more of the country's resources than a single individual hence you should actually pay more tax. Why should the rest of us pay for their kids? Having a child in the modern world is a choice. If you cant afford it don't have kids.

I want to live in your world, OP, where people's circumstances never change. I've seen families go from very comfortable to struggling for a variety of reasons - job losses, development of serious chronic illnesses, death of a spouse etc. Starting a family is always somewhat of a gamble and it doesn't pay off for everyone.

Dr. Em

Instead of politicians making snide comments, I would like to see a proper review of how the government can provide the greatest support to families at the most efficient cost to the taxpayer. What would the impact be, for example, if they scrapped the child benefit entirely, but properly subsidised and expanded chreches? That would be a far better use of their time.

Geuze

Dr. Em wrote: »

Instead of politicians making snide comments, I would like to see a proper review of how the government can provide the greatest support to families at the most efficient cost to the taxpayer. What would the impact be, for example, if they scrapped the child benefit entirely, but properly subsidised and expanded chreches? That would be a far better use of their time.

A version of this has happened.

The Early Childcare Supplement (cash 250 per quarter/ 1,000 pa) was scrapped, and the ECCE was introduced.

I read the ECCE is 1/3 the cost of the ECS.

Geuze

Geuze wrote: »

A lone parent can get:

• OPFP
• QCI
• wages from a job - they can keep some or part of QCI and earn up to a point
• an extra tax credit
• WFP

as well as the normal Child Benefit.

Plus maybe HAP, and maybe GMS medical card.

Aside from OPFP, all of these things are what couples already have, or are also available to them.

A couple in receipt of welfare will also get QCI, as well as an adult dependant allowance. If one of them goes to work and the other claims a welfare payment then some of the QCI can be retained depending on household income. Whats more, this will be paid until their youngest child is 18 (or 22 in FTE). Couples can also claim WFP, HAP and GMS cards.

The single person child carer tax credit only brings a working single parent's tax credit up to the same tax credit as a two parent family who can share their tax credits if one of them goes to work. It does not give the single parent anything extra over and above what the two parent family has.

The other poster tried to imply that single parents gets extra over and above what couples do. This is simply not accurate.

Tpcl20

sameoldname wrote: »

I've always wondered why they don't scrap tax breaks for married couples and give them to people who have kids instead. So say you get more tax relief for every child below 18 years of age up to a maximum of 3 children. That way single parents get the benefit too and you encourage people to have enough kids to replace the aging population.

I've been listening to this debate about Child Benefit for over 20 years, and the same arguments for and against come up every time.

Child benefit is considered a universal payment for every child regardless of family income (even millionaires get it) and has traditionally always been paid to the mother. So its not going to be means tested. If they tried to introduce means testing for it, there would be uproar.

To change from its current form to a tax credit would be very complicated. Tax credits instead of a cash payment would only be of benefit to people who pay tax. Some parents (mostly mothers) choose to give up work to be stay at home parents (especially when children are young) and the cash child benefit payment every month is part of what makes this choice financially viable for them.

So this is where it has the potential to gets tricky. If CB was to switch to a tax credit system, it would need to factor in those who are not paying tax, so in reality, a two tier system would be needed - one operated by Revenue for those in the PAYE system, and one operated by Social Protection for those who are not.

In the case of married/cohabitating couples, if the tax credit could be claimed and/or transferred from one parent to the other it would be more feasible, (e.g. stay at home mother / father claims tax credits) but then you have the situation if the parents separate (and which already exists with the single person child tax credit) and the struggle over access/custody and which parent should get to claim the credit. (Both can't).

Any potential savings would probably be lost in the cost it would take to administer, and which is why the straightforward, per child payment, administered by Social Protection and paid to the mother (or father in certain cases), is probably the simplest way, and why I believe they haven't changed it to date, and they won't anytime soon.

(Then there is also the issue of child benefit that is paid outside the state as part of EU legislation - but lets not even go there).