With 1 supporters
We still need 1 signatures to reach 5000
The issue
Raising a family requires a lot of effort and money. But the federal government is penalising single income families who do their own child-care at home by continually removing financial assistance from them and redirecting this money to child-care operators, benefitting only those families who place their children in commercial childcare. They are heavily subsidising institutionalised child-care, to the tune of $10 billion per annum in 2020, and rising.
At the same time, the $5,000 baby bonus has been scrapped, the School kids’ bonus has been scrapped and the Family Tax Benefit (FTB) Part A supplement worth $750 per child per year has been scrapped for households with a total income of over $80,000. A family earning $80,001 with four children is $3000 worse off because of the change.
There is no cap on the amount of child-care subsidy a family earning under $186,958 per annum can claim. A family earning $186,958-$351,248 can claim up to $10,190 per child per year.
How is it fair to financially punish single-income families who want to decide how their children should be cared for?
Read more...
The government has frozen the indexation of FTB’s for two years and spending on FTBs is set to fall by $500 million in the next three years. After the Howard government ended, both major parties’ policies have been to remove financial assistance to parents who choose to care for their children at home, while pouring lavish subsidies upon commercial child-care operators.
A higher female participation-rate in the workforce is the stated aim of this discriminatory policy but as the increase of women between 25-44 years (child-bearing age) in the workforce has only risen a few percentage points, (the majority of increased female workforce-participation has been in women aged over 55) it is likely that the extra taxation collected from additional female workers is less than the billions of dollars in childcare subsidies, making childcare subsidies an overall burden on the taxpayer.
It is a matter of equality and fairness that non-discriminatory financial assistance be available to all families with young children. This would allow all families to decide how they want to care for their children—whether out-of-home, or parent-care, or in-home care by grandparents/relatives. It would also allow families more freedom to decide on the number of children they wish to have. Howard’s $5,000 baby bonus increased the birth rate from 1.73 to 2.02 births per woman—population replacement level is 2.13 — and we have now declined to 1.74. So, equal financial support for all families with young children could mean more workers in the future and lower taxes paid by everyone.
The current unjust Paid Parental Leave policy that supports one mother with $500 and another mother with $12,500 based on their recent employment history must also be addressed.
The Petition
We the undersigned ask the government to:
- Index income-tax brackets to the cost of living so that workers don’t have the benefits of wage increases eroded from shifting into a higher tax bracket.
- Introduce family-based taxation, as adopted in at least 14 Western countries, which means taking income tax (PAYG) only after consideration of how many family members are living on that income.
- Introduce concessions to assist larger families, applied to basic living items such as cars (people-movers), fuel, electricity, mortgages, and rates or rent.
- Simplify the very complicated child-care subsidy system by having a flat-rate, taxable-per-child payment that is given directly to parents to choose what care suits their family: parent care, stranger care, for example.
- Remove the work test for Paid Parental Leave. This would eliminate the current unjust policy that supports one mother with $500 and another mother with $12,500 based on their recent employment history.