Child benefit fiasco looms
WITHDRAWING child benefit from more than a million families could be George Osborne’s poll tax moment.
The Chancellor’s plan is riddled with anomalies and hobbled by administrative complexity.
A recognition of the costs of childrearing is to be withdrawn from those working families who pay most tax, yet those who do not work for a living can carry on claiming for unlimited numbers of children and better-off people without children at home are to be asked for no equivalent sacrifice.
The most important question Mr Osborne has been unable to answer is as follows: why would any hardworking family made at least £1,000 a year worse off by a single fiscal measure ever again vote for the party implementing it?