Posible Conservative welfare cuts leaked

Do people on benefits pay tax?

Some people claiming disability benefits do, yes.

I know I pay tax. My State Pension (a benefit) is added to my work pension so anything above the £10,500 (or whatever the current tax allowance is) is taxed at 20%

So people claiming disability allowance over the tax threshold pay tax (thanks Ana) and I see no reason why everyone who have income in excess of the tax allowance shouldn't pay their fair share of tax too.

How benefits are taxed

I get contribution rate ESA and upper and lower DLA. DH's only income is carer's allowance. So they're going to attack every aspect of our income. ESA and carer's allowance are already taxable. We get housing benefit but it doesn't pay all our rent because we have two bedrooms so lose 14% of our entitlement and our rent is over the £299 a month allowance. (No I don't live in a big house in a posh area).

They already give with one hand and take away with the other.

DH gets just over £61 a week for the 24/7 care he gives me. How much would it cost if they had to provide that care?

reducing eligibility for the carers allowance

A 40% reduction in those eligible for carers allowance. Isn't carers allowance only paid to those people who look after someone too disabled to do basic things for themselves? So how will that work if people are left with no support, unable to feed themselves, get dressed, etc?

vampirequeen - you are not being attacked
these are 'ideas' from a thinktank not policy - it is blatant electioneering by the opposition to 'leak'
how do you think 'they' in the Labour party will rein in the welfare state that we cannot afford.
if you are both not using up your full personal allowance of 10k a year each you will pay no tax - so 'they' are taking nothing away from you.
if your income is below the personal allowance you should be entitled to IR ESA which is not taxable.
I think all income (benefits or pension) should be taxed - with a lower rate of 10% for those whose income is below the national average (25K) but above the personal tax allowance. fairer and easier to administer.
awaits 'flaming' but I do find there is a lot of misinformation around in the run up to the GE.

CA is payed if you care for more than (I think) 23 hours a week. It's not payed fo full time. The DLA is 'supposed' to pay for that.

DLA is non taxable at present.

I'm trying to understand all this. So Galen is DLA a sort of top up payment, to allow those who need help living with a disability, to buy in help? And perhaps to buy in equipment they might need too?

Mollie65 we have no way of knowing who leaked these. It may even have been the Conservatives testing the ground. What we do know its that they are intending to reduce the "welfare" (their new and rather pejorative word) by £12 billion and the cuts will have to come from somewhere. Equally Labour has said it will be reducing the deficit by cutting the benefits bill, but their balance will mean they take far less from the benefits. They will have a larger tax take than the Conservatives. Using the Mansion Tax and raising the upper percentage have been mentioned. They will separate spending on capital (as a company would do) to provide both infrastructure, particularly housing, jobs and growth. This is the difference as I understand it but you may be able to add clarification to this Mollie65. I imagine they will both be looking at these leaks.

It may help to see what are the most common currently taxable and tax free benefits

*State benefits that are taxable*

The most common benefits that you pay Income Tax on are:
the State Pension
Jobseeker’s Allowance
Carer’s Allowance
Employment and Support Allowance (contribution based)
Incapacity Benefit (from the 29th week you get it)
Bereavement Allowance
pensions paid by the Industrial Death Benefit scheme
Widowed Parent’s Allowance
Widow’s pension

*Tax-free state benefits*

The most common state benefits you don’t have to pay Income Tax on are:
Housing Benefit
Employment and Support Allowance (income related)
Income Support - though you may have to pay tax on Income Support if you’re involved in a strike
Working Tax Credit
Child Tax Credit
Disability Living Allowance
Child Benefit (income based - use the Child Benefit tax calculator to see if you’ll have to pay tax)
Guardian’s Allowance
Attendance Allowance
Pension Credit
Winter Fuel Payments and Christmas Bonus
free TV licence for over-75s
lump-sum bereavement payments
Maternity Allowance
Industrial Injuries Benefit
Severe Disablement Allowance
Universal Credit
War Widow’s Pension
Young Person’s Bridging Allowance
*https://www.gov.uk/income-tax/taxfree-and-taxable-state-benefits

reducing eligibility for the carers allowance. This is already a taxable benefit. What they are suggesting is that the eligibility is reduced. I have no idea what this change could or would be as it is pretty hard to be eligible now. You cannot get it if you earn more than more than £102 a week anyway and you have to be caring for 35 hours or more so I wonder what "they" are thinking they would do.

Carer's allowance is paid if you care for 35 hours or more Galen.

Contributory ESA is £108 a week. My IR ESA would be £8 a week because I have a very small personal pension.

Tell me again how I'm not going to suffer if they make these cuts.

My DLA is for personal care and mobility as I need a great deal of support with both. This comes in at just over £400 a month. If you add that to the £180ish a month DH gets in carers allowance we qualify for just under £600 a month. Say there are 30 days in a month that's 720 hours. £600 divided by 720 is 83p. If DH didn't look after me how would I find someone willing to work for 83p per hour (even if it was legal). You may suggest that I only have care for a certain number of hours a day but which hours should I have. When will I need care? When am I likely to be suicidal or in self harm mode? It's impossible to know.

What has been suggested so far and has a figure attached to it amounts to about 6bn so where is the rest of the 30bn coming from - anyone any ideas?

I would be very sad to see any lowering (or indeed, as some have suggested, scrapping) of Carer's Allowance. I was around in SSD both before and after this came in and it made a huge difference to the quality of some people's lives, not just financially but in recognising the valuable role they play. They save the country millions in paid carers. And many suffer loss of earnings.

I do not know how anyone can justify taxing disability payments. The disabled need more money, not less. They do not ask to be disabled.
It costs a lot more for them to take part in normal life.
The DLA rules have been tightened up quite considerably by the last government. I don't think they want disabled people to get out of their houses any more.

Tax the rich more, so they do not have to tax the poor.
That's the Labour party's answer. I agree with it.

Me too.....and yes I'm a taxpayer as well as on benefits.

Labour's proposed 'mansion tax' will raise £1.2 billion, which won't go very far.

Rather than all these cuts and oeople losing their jobs, shouldn't we simply be raising taxes across the board? Isn't that a fairer way of doing things?

Is it fair? The poor are already struggling and can't afford to pay more tax. The rich may not like it but they can afford it.

One of the problems relating to the economic debate is that the alternative to austerity is never properly discussed. Reaction to this suggestion is the incorrect statement that it would mean greater debt. So rather than trying to reduce the deficit by ever more austerity the alternative would be to introduce a stimulative to the economy and grow it much more quickly than can be achieved by austerity. We can look back at 2009 to 10 where a stimulating budget was introduced and see it reduced from 157bn in 2009 and in a year it was down to 118bn. It has taken GO 5 years to achieve a fraction of this - 108bn in 2014. The stimulation can be achieved by capital investment using approx £30bn with int. at 0.5% a really cheap deal. Or if that doesn't appeal to those of a more conservatory nature we could use £30bn of QE ensuring that it directed at industry and not the banks. You will remember that we have used QE to the tune of 500bn but this has been pumped into the hands of those who caused the problem in the first place.
Perhaps we could also look at the very rich 1% who have profited to an enormous extent over the past 5 years - to the tune of grabbing 90% of the total wealth and consider whether this is fair and balanced.

I agree whitewave.

Using one of Mrs Thatcher's cosy domestic analogies, my feeling is that if, in order to pay off your debts very quickly, you let your house fall down around you, the long term cumulative cost to you and your family may well exceed the savings you have made.

According to IDS, the Tories are not going to let us know where the cuts in benefits are going to be made until after the election.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/mar/29/tories-welfare-cuts-details-reveal-after-general-election

Very helpful.