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I agree with you – that tactic should be stopped.

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What annoys me the most is the parents who “play the game” and pull their kids out of Melrose and Beechwood in time to enable them to pass the 11 plus with flying colours and thus secure a scholarship to the colleges.

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Fair point but if the family allowance was scrapped altogether and was only available by application which would be means tested, how many people would need to be employed to deal with those applications to properly assess them? 2 or 3 perhaps, at a gross cost of say £80k to £120k perhaps? Seems perfectly feasible to me if it was to result in say 75% of family allowance no longer needing to be paid.

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Numerous parents with several children would have no choice. I accept that those with just one child would find it easier to find £2100. A heck of a lot harder to find an extra £6300 if there are three children of various ages.

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Undoubtedly there are some pupils who would have to leave, but I doubt the extra cost borne by the taxpayer for these pupils would exceed the savings made by abolishing the subsidies.

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Its more that some middle income families have a low net income after capital repayments on their mortgages and childcare costs. They are the ones who would suffer if Family Allowance was clawed back on the basis of gross income.

As both the above outgoings are not tax deductible Income Tax would not have the data.

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This would be slightly more complicated though, for example means testing parents in the cases of unmarried / separated households where the tax code would be different.

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Thank you for letting me know. I’ll have a read of the whole lot when I have the chance. :-)

PS now following you on Twitter

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That’s only because the same income data that Social Insurance would need, and which income Tax already have, is not being shared.

The States of Guernsey, in those separate departments, would have all the information they need.

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The Social Security Dept undertook extensive consultation and modelling when investigating an income related Family Allowance only four years ago. The results can be read on pages 1060-1064, Billet XII 2008 but the conclusion was;

“… it was not possible to design an income related family allowance scheme, on a cost neutral basis, that would not adversely impact upon middle-income families while providing sufficient additional income for low income families to warrant the increased administrative costs and complexities.”

At the time the SSD was not looking to save money but to distribute the pot more effectively to those genuinely in need.

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Sorry if that puts you off, but some topics are too complex to get across in shorter posts to those such as Spartacus who need to be told something 10 times, in 10 different ways, before the penny finally drops. Most other posters don’t tend to jump in with both feet unless they really know what they are talking about.

In the case of a pension scheme, we are talking about a current £320m black hole, which has huge implications for every one of us. Not sure about you but I think that’s worth getting a full understanding about, because our politicians seem unwilling to confront it. I’m not even sure that more than a handful of them actually understand the implications either, which is truly frightening.

It would be nice to hear what regular deputy posters like Dave Jones and Matt Fallaize have to say about it, and especially Gavin St Pier – all noticeably silent. Have they been gagged?

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No – you mean all must be given the chance to be equally average.

If Finland is so great, there are regular flights from several UK airports. I’d take a coat though at this time of year!

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And your own respective contributions to this blog is what exactly? I don’t recall any of you posting significant.

Just ignore what you don’t wish to read.

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