Tax the childless! Encourage ‘our own’ to breed! What an asinine, inhumane way to tackle a population crisis | Child benefit | The Guardian

44 comments

  3. Honestly I find the entire idea discriminatory, first off what if you want children but can’t have them through infertility or suffer from cancer and become sterile through radiotherapy etc..You gonna tax those people?

    Or what about post op trans people? They can’t have kids either, you gonna tax them? This entire concept is utterly moronic tbh

  4. I have a revolutionary idea:
    what if we decreased the burden of living. Everyone who I have spoken to who dont want kids are in 2 camps they either definitely do not want kids ever or they cant have kids because they’re stuck paying someone elses mortgage and jobs are utterly shit where they wont be able to afford a kid in the first place.

  5. Who still wants to have kids? If you understand the type of world they’ll inherit it is no responsible behaviour.

  6. If you want people to have kids. Lower the cost of fucking living.

    ​

    Many people don’t have kids because they cost an absolutel fortune—with greedy companies doing everything they can by overcharging for child products (like school uniforms).

  10. Instead of ‘taxing the childless’ what the government should be doing is giving a one of 5-10k payment for people who *do* have kids.

    This was done in Spain/Australia during the early 2000s and worked well in both countries, AFAIK.

  13. Not sure how keen I am about being taxed for the endometriosis I have, having to take birth control so I’m not vomiting and shitting through the eye of a needle for 3-4 days a month every month (and therefore be off work sick), and the fact that it is “highly unlikely” and I have a “minimal chance” of ever being able to be pregnant. I kind of feel like the pain of the disease and the fact I’ve had to come to terms with my diagnosis was taxing enough, but sure, let’s punish me further for something out of my control!

    Other people who aren’t in my boat are holding off because they can’t afford children. To be fair, if having a child was not basically a pipe dream for me, I would be hesitating because of the cost of living and climate change and the fact that childcare is outrageously expensive. Focus on improving cost of living and a lot of people would be less hesitant, I’m sure.

  14. The future is going to be hell.

    Either a climate change hell of starvation and death or a right wing dystopia of neo feudalism and forced sexual bondage overseen by an unholy meeting of right wing ethno-nationalists and reactionary fundamentalist religious nut cases.

    I am glad I am old.

  15. Childless people are more likely to be single, and single people already have more expensive lives.

    What about homosexual people? This sounds discriminatory.

  17. Doing something to tackle the insane childcare costs might help. A full time nursery place for a child in the UK is on average 14k a year (more in my area). That is simply not viable for many people even with both parents working full time.

    We have the second most expensive childcare costs in the world.

  19. >To anyone sensible, the cause of the low birthrate is obvious: 12 years of governments that prioritise the retired over the working-aged have created a society in which nobody can afford a house, landlords hold ever more of the cards, and renters are insecure. Add in workplace discrimination against the pregnant and unaffordable childcare, and the fact that the nation itself has become an inhospitable environment for raising children that you can also feed. The result, as astonishing as it may sound, is fewer children.

    Except the stats show the exact opposite: the poor outbreed the rich by a significant margin. 24% of people in the lowest quintile group have children, compared to 13% in the highest quintile group, despite the fact that the highest quintile group is likely to be older than the lowest.

  20. Subsidize child care then. That’s the big one. If people know they can have a child without being forced to stay home for several years or risk going broke, or condemn a child to being a latch-key kid then they will have kids.

    Enable rather than punish.

  21. So we create a society of breeders and non-breeders. Homosexuals are obviously destined for a life of high taxes and servitude . You should probably only allow breeders to vote. Non breeders become second class citizens en shrined in law, basically servants to the breeder class. You are able to distinguish between the classes as breeders wear red sombreros and non-breeders grey.

  22. I’m literally not having kids as I can’t afford them. I want them but childcare costs more than my mortgage. If you tax me, it’s making the problem worse.

  24. There are so many other things they could consider before this. Such as lowering childcare costs, increasing maternity and paternity pay and leave, decreasing the cost of utilities and housing.

    If they trial all of those things and the birth rate doesn’t increase, then maybe consider this. However, I know for a fact that the birth rate would improve.

    My husband and I currently have a joint income of £90k and we’ve saved up to cover maternity leave losses. It’s absolutely bonkers that we’ve had to do that when we earn decent salaries.

  25. Smarter people will just not have kids because being taxed prevents them saving/being as financially stable.

    Dumber people will just knock others up/get knocked up for tax relief and it’ll lead to more children being raised in broken homes that aren’t really ready/suitable for kids to grow up in.

    I know there’s a lot of talk about the impact on LGBTQ+ folk but even as a straight person it’s a shit idea. What about women who have a lot of trouble conceiving, you’re just going to put them through miscarriage after miscarriage to help tackle this imaginary population crisis?

  26. Pay more for longer maternity and paternity leave and support and regulate childcare costs. How are young people supposed to have children when most of them are still renting and maternity pay is £156.66 a week for 39 weeks. Or have children when childcare is around £50-60 a day if you work full time and need 9 hours of it. The government only gives you free hours after the child is 2, but if both of you are working and making minimum wage, it will count as earning too much to be eligible for that. Everyone gets free hours after the child is 3 years old, but only during term time, so you are still paying a lot. Not to mention that families who want more than 1 child, usually have a 2-3 year gap between children so they are starting again with a baby and the costs.
    And yeah, why have children if you can’t afford them etc etc. at the moment, realistically half of the population can’t afford them. And that is just plain wrong.

  27. Childless people don’t get child benefits.

    Unmarried people don’t get Married Couples Allowance.

    And single people living alone only get 25% reduced council tax reduction instead of 50%

    Like we are already punishing, childless, unmarried and single people. Literally no amount of extra punishment is going to make people have kids. It’s just giving them even less money meaning they cannot provide a stable home.

    And if it does convince couples to have babies when they previously didn’t want to they’re just going to be a lot more unwanted babies.

  28. If they do this we’re going to have a kid, but just completely neglect all of its needs. Back from school -> dinner -> bed. Thats it life until 18.

    /s

    But I bet some people think this way

  29. This has been a thing for decades (centuries? I remember discussion on a youtube video about similar ideas in the 1700s) and has never been a good idea. It unintentionally discriminates against so many already marginalized groups it’s not even funny. Just because of that it should be dismissed out of hand.

    Whether it works is also a point of contention, because there’s one really good example: the Russian tax on childlessness (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_on_childlessness#:~:text=As%20originally%20passed%20and%20enforced,to%2045%20years%20of%20age.)

    While it did coincide with a long period of increased fertility, it also coincided with a long period of economic hardship that in all other forms of government correlates with higher fertility anyway. This sort of makes it hard to draw any solid conclusions. But only sort of, because we have other data.

    Most countries have plenty of tax-based and other rules incentivizing having children, or otherwise making the burden of childcare more manageable alongside other responsibilities. There are also countries that don’t have this. The funny thing about all of this is, that there’s actually a bit of a negative correlation going on – the more money governments spend on getting people to have children, the lower the birthrate. Sort of. Among developed countries – a very specific set of developed countries – there is a positive correlation between spending on child care and birth rate (e.g. https://newsabb.com/business/fertility-childcare-costs-exacerbate-the-demographic-drought/), but if you look at *all* countries, that’s not the case at all – state support only functions to compensate higher costs of bringing up children (browse around on https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=increase+fertility&btnG=).

    It should be noted that this is much stronger data than that of the soviet union – there’s many countries with markedly different regulatory regimes all fitting fairly well into the regression. This is why I’d argue that in developed countries it’s mostly high cost that prevents people from having children. A positive incentive therefore would help, where a negative tax would be expected to be counterproductive.

    Outside of the developed world, education and poverty seem to be the absolutely *dominant* correlation with fertility.

  30. My plan before having kids is to have a stable home that I own and can afford, now I’m going to be taxed extra?

    Best thing to do in UK is just be an irresponsible adult, get into lots of financial debt, have as many kids as possible, don’t exercise and get overweight to claim disability and let the state sort it for you. Free housing and benefits.

    I would have left to go to Europe but now I can’t even do that.

  31. As I said [yesterday](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/w4b7cw/should_we_tax_the_childless/ih1mlfj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) on this subject :

    Anyone who says that we should tax the childless can go fuck themselves.

    Consider that as a childless person I pay taxes into the system, but I don’t take costs out of the system that are associated with being/having kids:

    * healthcare (ante natal, birth, post natal, 18 years of healthcare and free prescriptions for the child)
    * education (free/subsidised childcare places, 12+ years of school, even lollipop men/women)
    * tax credits (what used to be family allowance) and other benefits
    * no vat on children clothes
    * and so on

    Even businesses that offer “kids go/eat free” are subsidised by the childless because adult prices are higher to pay for the free places/meals that kids get.

    Do I complain that I’m helping to fund other people’s kids like this?

    No, because I’m not a monster. I recognise that it’s all an investment in the future and I’m happy to contribute via my taxes.

    Finally, have they considered the *why* of people not having kids?

    * What about people who *can’t* have kids?
    * What about people who have kids but they died? (Sorry for your loss, can you pay more taxes now please)
    * What about people who choose not to have kids because of hereditary conditions?
    * What about people who choose not to have kids because of environmental concerns? (Apparently it’s the single best way of reducing your carbon footprint)
    * What about people that don’t have kids because they *just don’t want kids*? (And that’s absolutely fine)
    * What about people who don’t have children *yet*? Do they pay this extra tax? And can they claim a refund when they do have children?

    And then there are people who don’t have kids because they can’t afford them. They aren’t *choosing* to not have kids.

    I bet that the idiots who say “tax the childless” are also the ones who look at families on benefits and say “if you can’t afford to have kids then you should have had them in the first place”.

    Wankers.

  32. I’m yet to hear of a single actual person arguing in favour of this ridiculous notion. Stinks of pure ragebait tbh.

  33. In my mind there’s two choices. Have kids, stay destitute and say you’re kids where the best thing in your life. Or don’t have kids, maybe improve you’re financial life and spend it all exploring, growing, learning, traveling etc and then say the best thing on your life was the experiences. I might be selfish but I know which option sounds more appealing.

  34. I’m getting sick of this, what is going through these twisted peoples mind. Their encouraging us to have kids, even forcing us in some circumstances…This week the UK Government quietly removed ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ and ‘bodily autonomy’ from an international statement on human rights…several Tory MP’s are calling to ban abortions altogether, whilst others are calling for the time limit to be reduced.

    Cost of living…people can’t even afford to feed themselves, yet you want them to breed

    You are destroying the healthcare system so in the near future they’d have to pay for that on top

    Kids are expensive

    Their doing sod all on climate change which affects the kids more than anyone, my parents are closer to 70 & are very likely to see the shit we’re facing with climate change so me and any kids are not going to have a great future

  35. The childless are already taxed. They pay into general taxation for schools, colleges and etc without any benefit to themselves. “Our own” is just right wing shite.

  36. They already are taxing the childless;
    As a childless person my tax goes towards funding schools (that I don’t use), funding children’s hospital visits (not to mention actually paying towards the birth), tax free childcare vouchers, child tax credits and I could go on.

    And that’s where I draw the line, extra benefits to actually help with childcare is fine, those children will care for me eventually.

    Adding another tax for the childless is insulting. What about women who medically can’t have children? They already have a hard enough time being constantly asked when they’re having children. So now they have to pay for it?

    There’s also who gets the extra tax? Do you just have to be a parent? What if you put your child up for adoption? What if you have partial custody? What if the child dies? Is there a “sorry for kid died, but you owe tax from it….”

  37. Any tax on the childless would have to be astronomical to outweigh the cost of having and raising a child

  38. > Tax the childless!

    They already do. The childless already pay for other people’s children’s educations, health, etc.

    And I’m happy to do so, because I don’t want to grow up in a society filled with diseased, feral morons.

    But if you think I should pay even more then you can take a long walk off a long pier.

  39. We already tax the childless for services they do not partake in.

    This is nothing other than a majority block looking to leverage its own advantage and mass to further advantage itself and discriminate against those who cannot evenly fight back.

    Oh and bare faced discrimination and bigotry.

  40. 1980’s Communist Dictatorship Romania did this. Just to paint a picure about where these policies come from…

  41. Hang on, isn’t almost every social media post about poor people ‘shouldnt have kids if you can’t afford them’?

    So now it’s ‘shouldn’t avoid having kids if you can’t afford it.’?

  42. My Wife and I earn ok and are responsible with money – yet we feel like having a kid would ruin us financially so we haven’t yet.

    Why the fuck should we be penalised for being sensible with money?

  44. Well the alternative is Tories admitting that immigrants are not the root of all evil. That’s not going to happen especially when Pritler is around. Brexit is a religion and must be protected at all costs.

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