Downing Street Says » Tax Credits

Asked if the Prime Minister still had confidence in the tax credit system following recent criticism of its performance, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that the Prime Minister fully supported the Treasury’s approach. In terms of giving tax credits to those who needed them, 6 million families including 10 million children had benefited from around £15billion of tax credits. Further measures had been introduced in the PBR to address the problems that had arisen. For detail however people should talk to the Treasury.

Asked if the Prime Minister supported the way the system was being run, the PMOS repeated that the Prime Minister supported the efforts that had been made most recently in Pre-Budget Report 2005 to announce measures to deal with the problems. It was important not just to look at the problems and what had been done to deal with them, but also how tax credits had helped over 6 million families.

Asked for a response to a suggestion by the Liberal Democrats that there should be an amnesty for people who had filled out their forms correctly and received money due to mistakes made by the Inland Revenue, the PMOS said that the Government had made changes which increased the amount disregarded from £2,500 to £25,000 which went some way on that issue.

Put to him that despite these changes this was the second year running that these kind of problems had arisen and asked if we shouldn’t perhaps move to a less complicated system, the PMOS said that what was not complicated was the benefit which was going to families. It was important to recognise that the system was delivering real benefit to real families.

Put to him that it was having the opposite effect if some families were being asked to repay money they didn’t have, the PMOS said that we should also recognise that this issue only arose because families income had increased and not been notified with the Inland Revenue. We had to find a way of dealing that, but that was being done.

Put to him that the fact that the system didn’t seem to be able to cope with changes in people’s income from one year to the other but instead always looked at people’s income for the preceding year, the PMOS pointed out that that was how the tax system worked in all cases.

2 Comments »

"Prime Minister supported the efforts that had been made…………. to announce measures to deal with the problems"

The efforts to announce measures – well that says a lot.

I suppose you could rephrase it as "The PM was more than happy with the direction of the spin and doesn’t give a tuppeny f**k about the folk who are suffering".

How about someone getting off their arse and doing something instead of being praised for generating weasel words.
Comment by Roger Huffadine — 25 Apr 2006 on 5:59 pm | Link
Yeah, But…

These people regard it as their job – maybe their holy duty – to generate words. Actions are for someone else.

It’s metaphysics, really. We don’t want to get our fingers dirty do we?
Comment by Chuck Unsworth — 26 Apr 2006 on 10:26 am | Link

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» Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Tax Credits

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