We have all seen the news stories - smoke and mirrors, Gordon giveth and Gordon taketh away etc. I think that we know the chancellor by now and expect that whenever Gordon gives something he takes something, but have you thought about the underlying implications of this budget, particularly in the sphere of data collection? At the moment there are famillies out there paying their 10% and then 22% of income tax, they are not dependent on any benefit and the government therefore has little reason to hold information on them updated voluntarily and annually. Then comes this budget, the 10% rate is scrapped and the 22% lowered to 20%, suddenly there are a lot of famillies about to be subjected to means testing for a benefit that up until this budget they didnt need. So now we have Government creating a dependency on Working Tax Credits, this system allows them to means test famillies hitherto not subjected to this annual disclosure of their finances. The Government now has more data to analyse concerning famillies in the UK, it will now know where more people actually work, what they earn, how many and who is dependant upon them. Great eh? This also means that more people are about to be caught in a new labour benefit trap with all the worry that entails.
Benefits have a way of creating dependency on them, this means that often recipients of working tax credits have to weigh up the cost of a pay rise or changing job because sometimes they will actually lose out if they just reach that border line where the WTC ends. If a family has been reliant on WTC and the periphial benefits such as prescription charges exemption, they will inevitably become part of the state dependency culture. There is a nasty little surprise for some famillies in reciept of WTC it is based on your earnings in the previous tax year - Not what you are earning now ergo for some individuals who find themselves in a new job earning less they may find things very tough until the time for the annual means test comes round. Those individuals unlucky enough to have their WTC miscalculated may find themselves with unexpected bills for thousands of pounds and little way of paying them back. This is particularly pertinent in times when a job for life doesn'e exist and there are large numbers of people who have several jobs in one financial year. Unlike its predecessor family credit, this benefit is fixed for a year it doesn't adjust with your circumstances, everything is adjusted at the end of each financial year during the means test process, this allows any debt you may have to the state to mount up and continue to mount so that when the new award notice is issued you may actually be in a new job earning less than you did previously but with a BILL as opposed to an award. Given the complexities of this system I wonder why the Government is deliberately forcing famillies onto this benefit, surely it can't be purely to allow them to observe, document and collect data on more people. Can it? The superpanoptican state really is alive.