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Benefit Cap- Daily Mail example family appear to be underclaiming £100 per week
Predictably the Daily Mail is going on and on and on about the benefit cap and how it will sort out our terrible deficit.
They have a very reactionary article from the former Archbishop of Canterbury (Carey) which buys wholesale the “dependency” view of the welfare state (which of course cannot be used to explain increases in the unemployment count unless one accepts that there just happened to be a massive increase in listlessness, fecklessness and benefit induced idleness at the same time as the economy tanked and loads of people lost their jobs).
Anyway, they also have some examples of hardworking families who do not claim benefits and feel cheesed off about the benefit cap being blocked. One example they give is the Trappett family. They are a family with 2 kids (twins) and a working father / stay at home mum. Mr T earns £26k a year, they pay £700 to rent their 3 bed house and the only benefit they get is child benefit.
Interestingly, on my calculations the hardworking Trappetts (who only claim child benefit) appear to be entitled to the following in addition to child benefit:
1. £43.93 per week child tax credit.
2. £62.05 per week housing benefit.
Perhaps the Trappetts would feel differently about the welfare state if they were in receipt of the £100 per week they are in fact missing out on.
I know this is a forum for grown-ups, but LOL anyway
I can’t really believe in Mr & Mrs Trachett & family either. They sound like characters from one of those public information films from the 1940’s to me. Mrs Trachett would be a volunteer fire warden and being instructed on how to make do and mend whilst MrTrachett would be erecting his Anderson shelter.
just happened to be a massive increase in listlessness, fecklessness and benefit induced idleness at the same time as the economy tanked and loads of people lost their jobs
In actual fact the LFBII index has, according to internal DWP figures that I found on a laptop left on a train, been increasing in inverse proportion to the readership of the Daily Mail.
As for the Trappet family singers; they would know that if they claimed those benefits they would move from being hard-working, cheery cockney, salt of the earth people to becoming scrounging, lazy, illegal immigrant, drug dealing lefties who shouldn’t be entitled anyway.
[ Edited: 25 Jan 2012 at 06:39 pm by Gareth Morgan ]I guess they just don’t want to be trappetted on benefits.
Oh dear… maybe I did the calculation wrong…. don’t get to calculate amounts very often anymore.
This is very embarrassing but I have just struggled to do a TC calculation….
Um… displaying my ignorance of such basic issues at this stage but here goes:
1. Taxable income = £26k pa.
2. Maximum TCs= £10315 (CTC: 1 family element and 2 child elements: £5655, WTC: basic element, couple element and a 30 hour element: £4660 ).
3. Excess income above threshold (£6420 if entitled to both WTC and CTC) is £19580.
4. 41% of that (£8027.80) is used to reduce tax credit award.
5. That leaves £2287.20 TCs per year.
7. Which is £43.98 per week…. roughly what I got out of the turn2us calculator I used earlier.
I think the Direct Gov website gets it wrong somehow…. possibly by assuming childcare costs (I got the same figures as Duncan when I attempted it).
Martin, from looking at this you are definitely right with the way that you have calculated the possible tax credit entitlement.
Interestingly, the article also features another case study of a family with two adult earners and one child who earn £33,000 gross in total and receive £10 per week in tax credits. Unless they claim for childcare, that family will cease being entitled to child tax credit from April 2012 as a result of the cuts to tax credits. strangely, they didn’t mention this! Even the case studies that the Daily Mail has trotted out show if anything that working families will also lose out as a result of the current benefit cuts, as well as the fact that many families are underclaiming as you have already pointed out.
My manual calculations are closer to Martin’s. I’ll run it through our system later.
I think your DirectGov calculation is assuming that he wasn’t working last year and has given him the high earnings disregard figure for tax credits.
Our calculation summary gives:
Tax Credit and Benefit synopsis
Working Tax Credit: £0.00
Relevant income: 500.00
Threshold: 123.52
Maximum: 89.66
Tapered: 154.35
Child Tax Credit: £44.17
Relevant income: 500.00
Threshold: 123.52
Maximum: 108.86
Tapered: 64.69
Housing Benefit: £61.13
Net income: 402.50
Applicable amount: 248.01
Maximum: 161.54
Tapered: 100.41
Council Tax Benefit: £0.00
Net income: 402.50
Applicable amount: 248.01
Maximum: 24.04
Tapered: 30.89
Total of entitlements is £105.30
Martin - I’m sure we can make space for you on Mark’s Tax Credits: the Essentials half day course.
More seriously, I’ve been banging on about this elsewhere and shouting at radios/TVs whenever people ignore the in work benefits that a family on £35K pa will be getting. A big welfare saving could surely be made by making sure people get paid a living wage which doesn’t need topping up by the state and doesn’t subsidise commercial profits - not a new or radical idea I know but maybe the Daily Hate need it mentioned to them?
The problem isn’t the high rates of benefit but the low rates of wages and the high costs of private rents basically.