The Working Tax Credit (WTC) is a state benefit in the United Kingdom made to people who work on a low income. It is a part of the current system of refundable (or non-wastable) tax credits introduced in April 2003 and is a means-tested social security benefit. In addition, people may also be entitled to the Child Tax Credit (CTC) if they are responsible for any children.
Despite their name, tax credits are not linked to a person's tax bill. The WTC can be claimed by working individuals, childless couples and working families with dependent children. The WTC and CTC are assessed jointly and families remain eligible for CTC even if where no adult is working or they have too much income to receive the WTC.
In 2010 the coalition government announced that the Working tax credit will, by about 2016, be integrated into and replaced by the new Universal Credit.
Read more about Working Tax Credit: History, How It Works, Calculation of The Annual Award, Interaction of WTC and CTC, Awards and Disregards, Assessment of Income, Level of Take-up, Implementation Difficulties, Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words working, tax and/or credit:
““I tell you the solemn truth that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms of physics.””
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“To give money to a sufferer is only a come-off. It is only a postponement of the real payment, a bribe paid for silence, a credit system in which a paper promise to pay answers for the time instead of liquidation. We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)