The Child Support Agency and Tax Credit

Tax Credits - Eradicating Child Poverty ?

The Child and Working Tax Credits, launched in April 2003, are central to the Government’s efforts to tackle poverty,  they are 'committed to halve child poverty by 2010 and eradicate it by 2020'.

Gordon Brown's flagship anti-poverty campaign has recently received a triple blow with news that a rise in both child and pensioner poverty had left Britain a more unequal country than when Labour came to power in 1997.

Britain's leading tax experts - the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) - said "that despite the billions of pounds spent on tax credits, Labour had yet to meet its 2005 benchmark of reducing child poverty by a quarter and that the prime minister would have to divert money from middle-class tax cuts to have an even chance of hitting the 2010 target".

Tackling child and pensioner poverty has been central to the Governments strategy and one where Gordon Brown has boasted again and again about the difference they are making - The truth is very different. Their target of halving child poverty by 2010 looks totally unattainable and it is the children being brought up in some of our most deprived areas who will pay the price.

The Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokeswoman Jenny Willott said: "The rise in child poverty for the second year running is a damning indictment of Labour and raises serious questions about the government's spending priorities".

The Child Support Agency (CSA) includes Child Tax Credits (CTC) + disabled and severely disabled child elements as assessable income for the calculation of child support.

Therefore, Government awards which are based on a families earnings and circumstances, in an effort to increase that families income, in line with its needs - are subject to another Government department, the CSA, deducting the relevant 15 - 40% max from one households award and bestowing the amount to another household, who's family may well be in receipt of CTC in its own right, as 'child support'.

Its hardly surprising that one in five children in Britain are living in poverty. In true Government style - what it gives with one hand, it takes with the other.
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