Do you support Child Benefit changes?

Child benefit is to be axed for higher rate taxpayers from 2013, Chancellor George Osborne has announced. What is your reaction?

Parents earning over about £44,000 who pay 40% tax and above will be affected. Currently child benefit is paid to all families with children and it is estimated the change will affect about 15% - 1.2m - of families.

Mr Osborne said he expected the public to accept that it was not fair to tax someone earning £18,000 a year to pay child benefit to someone earning £50,000.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/haveyoursay/2010/10/do_you_support_child_benefit_c.html

I do agree with these proposed changes. Lets face it, people who have a high income don't really need the child benefit. But I'm not convinced they're going about it the right way. Apparently if there's only one wage earner in the household and he/she's in the higher tax bracket, they don't qualify but if there are two wage earners in the household neither of whom is in the higher tax bracket, they are entitled to it, regardless of whether their two wages amounts to more than the other family's one wage. That doesn't sound very fair to me. I don't understand why they can't just make it means tested and have done with it. It should be about the household's total earnings in my opinion.

But there are also other places where money could be saved. One in particular is the £200 Heating Allowance which is paid to everyone over 60, regardless of their income and employment status. The only criteria for payment of the heating allowance is to be over 60. We had it for 5 years before my OH retired. We didn't need extra money for heating, we were earning enough to pay our own way but the government insist on handing this out to all over-60s. Why?

good point mazzie and im sure i heard somewhere that expats even get the cold weather payments

As far as I know, they get the heating allowance but the cold weather payments come on top of that and depend on the temperature where you live, so the chances of some of them getting that are probably slim, South of France, Spain, etc. They are paid by the week, depending on the official temp.

I agree with you Mazzie on both counts,child benefit and heating allowance.
As you say people get cold weather payments and end of the year payment no matter where they live,be it a mansion,warden run home ,where they don't pay anyway,or just your average home.This should be means tested too so the people who really need it get it,not just over 60s.

I think it's a good idea to stop child benefit for people with high income..if they have one child..what good is an extra £20 a week going to do..they realy don't need it