Criticism
The Working Tax Credit scheme has been subject to much criticism, particularly in the wake of the difficulties surrounding its implementation. Criticism has focused on the way that credits are calculated on an annual basis, leading to overpayment, followed by large demands for repayment, which those on low income may find difficult to meet. David Harker, chief executive of Citizens Advice commented "This is an untenable system. An annualised system doesn't provide the stability of income required by low income families". In addition, the scheme has been accused of being over complicated and difficult for claimants to understand, and of underestimating the extent to which the incomes of low-earners can fluctuate over a year, especially a problem for self-employed people whose income may fall below the minimum wage (at which point Working Tax Credit is disallowed).
The Labour Party claim that the tax credit system has proven to effectively tackle child-poverty, with, by their previous government's definitions, 2 million children lifted out of absolute poverty and almost 1 million out of relative poverty by 2007. However, the current Coalition government is seeking to redefine poverty so as to highlight "children living in workless households or those with drug-dependent parents", despite their tax credit incomes, remaining in poverty. Even with the previous definition, this government cites that the existing tax credits system failed to "meet its statutory target to halve the problem by 2010 - despite the huge amount of taxpayers’ money spent on tackling it."
Read more about this topic: Working Tax Credit
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
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“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)