Rt Hon George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, has confirmed the government’s plans to rescind child benefit from Britain’s highest earning families. Under the new proposals the Chancellor announced that parents earning more than £44,000 who pay 40% tax will be affected. This new plan is scheduled to apply from 2013 and ministers predict that it will affect approximately 15% of Britain’s families.
Commenting upon this issue on the BBC1’s morning breakfast programme Mr Osborne said:
“It’s very hard to justify taxing people on much lower incomes in order to pay the child benefit to some of the better off in society. It’s not a decision we’ve taken lightly but given the scale of the debts Labour’s left us with, and give they’ve left us with no plan and we’ve had to come up with proposals, we think this is fair”
The coalition contends that extensive reductions in public expenditure are necessary in order to curb the large budget deficit.
