{"id":14469,"date":"2012-03-07T10:44:46","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T10:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=14469"},"modified":"2012-03-07T10:44:46","modified_gmt":"2012-03-07T10:44:46","slug":"how-come-some-families-get-25000-cash-benefits-without-question-and-others-face-a-cap-of-26000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/03\/07\/how-come-some-families-get-25000-cash-benefits-without-question-and-others-face-a-cap-of-26000\/","title":{"rendered":"How come some families get \u00c2\u00a325,000 cash benefits without question and others face a cap of \u00c2\u00a326,000?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Welfare Reform Bill passed last week, As a result there is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.channel4.com\/news\/the-benefits-cap-explained-as-welfare-vote-looms\" target=\"_blank\">now a cap of \u00a326,000 a year<\/a> on the\u00a0benefits\u00a0a family can\u00a0receive, wherever they are, whatever their need, however many in the family there are.<\/p>\n<p>The issue is contentious: I do not support that cap. It's too crude to ever approximate to justice. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.channel4.com\/news\/the-benefits-cap-explained-as-welfare-vote-looms\" target=\"_blank\">Over 70,000 families<\/a> will lose as a result of it, whether fairly or not.<\/p>\n<p>But I have another reason for objecting. My research suggests that rather more families - more than 200,000 in fact - as quoted in the Guardian this morning - enjoy 50% tax\u00a0relief\u00a0on their pension contributions and get up to \u00a325,000 a year in tax subsidy for their savings as a result.<\/p>\n<p>The result is if you're on hard times the\u00a0maximum\u00a0benefit\u00a0you can have from the state is \u00a326,000 on which to survive, come what may. But if you're in the top 1% (the 50% tax payers are almost exactly 1% of all taxpayers) then you can have a\u00a0benefit\u00a0of \u00a325,000 a year from the state to boost your savings and make you\u00a0wealthier\u00a0still.<\/p>\n<p>You couldn't make it up. Except the Tories did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Welfare Reform Bill passed last week, As a result there is now a cap of \u00a326,000 a year on the\u00a0benefits\u00a0a family can\u00a0receive, wherever they<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/03\/07\/how-come-some-families-get-25000-cash-benefits-without-question-and-others-face-a-cap-of-26000\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tax-justice","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}