One million poor families will lose up to £4000 in working tax credits from today as part of the Lib Con spending cuts. Those who work less than 24 hours a week will lose all tax credits unless they can make up those hours. The lower their income, the more they will lose. I woulld like to have been at the meeting where the Coalition decided to do this. They could have moved the cut off up from 16 to 20 hours - if you follow the perverse logic of destroying Gordon Brown's great legacy to families inn the name of deficit reduction. But no - 24 hours is the minimum, or you are on your own. The tax credit losses apply to up to 1 million families.
The Resolution Foundation, a thinktank aiming to improve living standards for people on low and middle incomes, said thousands of working families would lose up to a quarter of their household income from Friday.
It said a young couple working 23 hours with one child and a household income of £15,500 would have received nearly £6,000 this year in working tax and child tax credits.
From Friday their entitlement to working tax credits would be switched off. Even taking into account the increase in the personal allowance and a small increase in child tax credits, the family is still projected to lose £2,961 a year (about 19% of total income) as the gains are offset by the wages squeeze and frozen child benefit.
The impact is greater the less income households have, as they have more working tax credits to lose. A single earner on the minimum wage of £6.08 an hour, working 20 hours a week, will lose £3,910 – more than a quarter (27%) of their income.
This is what a pernicious ideology does in the hands of a government of millionaires and lackeys. A million families made to suffer, not because it was unavoidable, but because this government does not waant to take money from the people who actually have lots of it. Take Amazon, who moved their UK business to Luxembourg in 2006 and haven't paid a penny in tax in the UK since.
The Resolution Foundation, a thinktank aiming to improve living standards for people on low and middle incomes, said thousands of working families would lose up to a quarter of their household income from Friday.
It said a young couple working 23 hours with one child and a household income of £15,500 would have received nearly £6,000 this year in working tax and child tax credits.
From Friday their entitlement to working tax credits would be switched off. Even taking into account the increase in the personal allowance and a small increase in child tax credits, the family is still projected to lose £2,961 a year (about 19% of total income) as the gains are offset by the wages squeeze and frozen child benefit.
The impact is greater the less income households have, as they have more working tax credits to lose. A single earner on the minimum wage of £6.08 an hour, working 20 hours a week, will lose £3,910 – more than a quarter (27%) of their income.
This is what a pernicious ideology does in the hands of a government of millionaires and lackeys. A million families made to suffer, not because it was unavoidable, but because this government does not waant to take money from the people who actually have lots of it. Take Amazon, who moved their UK business to Luxembourg in 2006 and haven't paid a penny in tax in the UK since.
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