Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Tamas]

Peak "computer says no" moment: newborn baby is registered with wrong birth sex but it cannot be corrected because of reasons:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/19/baby-girl-registered-wrong-sex-mansfield-registration-office

[Sheilbh]

There's recently been a case in the legal press where a law firm fucked up the paperwork so accidentally got the courts to divorce the wrong couple

[HVC]

Was one of the "accidently" divorced persons a lawyer in the firm?

[Barrister]

Peak "computer says no" moment: newborn baby is registered with wrong birth sex but it cannot be corrected because of reasons:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/19/baby-girl-registered-wrong-sex-mansfield-registration-office

So one of the things I've learned in a career in law is that you can do basically anything as long as all parties agree.

So how the hell can you not correct a birth certificate that everyone agrees is incorrect?


Edit: I'm not authorized to give legal advice in England and Wales, but surely the couple could just seek a writ of mandamus and seek costs against the government?

[HVC]

He was me favourite he-man villain.

[Barrister]

He was me favourite he-man villain.

Certiorari was cooler.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah I don't get it given that in the same story:

In a twist to the tale, Sarah Power, who registered her baby daughter at the same register office – with the same registrar – in October last year, had a similar experience.

"The registrar read back all the details correctly – including that our daughter was female – and then asked us to check the spellings of the name," she said. "We checked the spelling but not the gender, because the registrar had already said it to us correctly."

"It was only when we got outside the office door that we looked at the certificate and realised that our daughter had been registered as male."

Power, however, was able to get a new, corrected birth certificate for her daughter after the registrar directed her to a GPO form. The Home Office, however, say this is no longer an option. 'The local registration service was advised earlier this year not to issue [corrected] certificates in this way," they said.

The GRO and Home Office are now saying this is impossible - I can't think of any new laws that changed things since last October. So it doesn't quite add up to me but sounds like some legal advice or "computer says no" situation.

Although the issue seems to be that they can correct the certificate, but it notes that there's been a correction as opposed to being a totally new certificate.

[Josquius]

Yet if unmarried parents have a kid and later get married apparently they legally have to - though it's an unenforced loop hole reregister.
Mad a mistake is insisted upon.

Also in dumb things.
Child benefit is a small payment given to support parents.
If you earn 60k-80k this tails off over time to being fully ineligible at 80k.
So far so sensible....
But the way it works is they give you the full benefit then you have to fill a tax return to pay a bunch of it back in April.
This just seems like a ridiculous and unnecessary shuffling of money.
If someone is eligible for 400 quid then just give them that to befin with. Don't give them 2000 then tax them 1600 extra.

[Sheilbh]

I'm not sure it is so sensible. There's a real case for pretty comprehensive tax reform because I'm not sure the taxes here (which are standard) are particularly rational.

This is child benefit, without student loans:


I'd argue that's not a sensible system

You can see others especially, for example, for someone with kids and student loan repayments:
https://taxpolicy.org.uk/wp-content/assets/october_2024_marginal_rates.html

The Economist had a piece on this and the coming squeeze. For example, from April the threshold for paying back a student loan and a full time minimum wage job will cross (when I graduated it was a £10k+ difference. Add student loans into to tax and grads on £27k+ will be paying a marginal rate of almost 40% and those earning over £50k around 57%.

As I say I think the whole system needs reform (and base broadening) because otherwise I think by the end of this term it may be a Labour government facing nurses on marginal rates of almost 40% and head-teachers losing child benefits.

[Josquius]

Not quite sure I understand the graph. What's causing the spikes there?

And yes. The system does need reform. It was purely the get paid the money then pay it back factor I was talking about, not boundaries.

With student loans the really annoying part I ran into is if you obey all the rules its basically forbidden to work abroad unless you're raking it in.
I managed to avoid them 2 years in Japan but then had to start paying and they demanded a minimum monthly payment for being in Japan which was way above what I'd have been paying in the UK. Really made it impractical to keep going in my job of the time (not that I wanted to but hey ho)

[Gups]

Yet if unmarried parents have a kid and later get married apparently they legally have to - though it's an unenforced loop hole reregister.
Mad a mistake is insisted upon.

Also in dumb things.
Child benefit is a small payment given to support parents.
If you earn 60k-80k this tails off over time to being fully ineligible at 80k.
So far so sensible....
But the way it works is they give you the full benefit then you have to fill a tax return to pay a bunch of it back in April.
This just seems like a ridiculous and unnecessary shuffling of money.
If someone is eligible for 400 quid then just give them that to befin with. Don't give them 2000 then tax them 1600 extra.

You could choose not to claim it. Sorry reading more carefully, your point is that you can't claim a small amount. I think the reason behind this is that you won't necessarily know your income for tax year until it's over - both in terms of he income and in terms of deductions like pension, charity contributions.

[Sheilbh]

Not quite sure I understand the graph. What's causing the spikes there?

And yes. The system does need reform. It was purely the get paid the money then pay it back factor I was talking about, not boundaries.

Those spikes are the pay it back factor. There are various points where things get clawed back which produce really very high marginal rates between those boundaries. For example the way people start losing their personal allowance after earning £100k - although the really severe one there (for people with kids) is that they lose childcare support immediately and it's not gradual. Which produces weirdness like this:


I think it's just lots of little fiddly changes over the years (the sort of thing I associate with Gordon Brown and George Osborne budgets) having weird impacts and, because of the need to raise money, the level they kick in being frozen dragging in more people in regular jobs.

It needs someone to take a look at the whole system. As the weird thing is we have the same tax take as a % of GDP as Germany, we have European average tax rates on high earners. The oddness in Britain is that we have a very narrow tax base by comparison and we basically tax workers more than other people (especially retirees) and graduates more than non-grads.

With student loans the really annoying part I ran into is if you obey all the rules its basically forbidden to work abroad unless you're raking it in.
I managed to avoid them 2 years in Japan but then had to start paying and they demanded a minimum monthly payment for being in Japan which was way above what I'd have been paying in the UK. Really made it impractical to keep going in my job of the time (not that I wanted to but hey ho)

Weird I've had friends who lived and worked abroad with student who were paying less than I was in the UK. It might be that you didn't complete the right form (where they assess what your payment should be) so had the fixed monthly fee?

Although this was one of the reasons I preferred student loans to a graduate tax even though the way it works in the UK is effectively as a tax. But a tax would only apply to people in the UK whereas the loan structure allows us to claw back money from, say, corporate lawyers who move to New York.

[Josquius]

Those spikes are the pay it back factor. There are various points where things get clawed back which produce really very high marginal rates between those boundaries. For example the way people start losing their personal allowance after earning £100k - although the really severe one there (for people with kids) is that they lose childcare support immediately and it's not gradual. Which produces weirdness like this:

The childcare one that gets me, and I've written to my MP about, is the way it is lost if one parent should fall below the minimum thresholds.
Not the end of the world for me  (though painful and annoying) but I can imagine this is really messing things up for some people. Leaves the whole issue of childcare a gamble for those with unreliable low income.
Honestly my sympathy for people losing it over 100k isn't particularly high. More in the domain of "well that sucks" than anything life changing...though yes, making it gradual is better.

Weird I've had friends who lived and worked abroad with student who were paying less than I was in the UK. It might be that you didn't complete the right form (where they assess what your payment should be) so had the fixed monthly fee?

Although this was one of the reasons I preferred student loans to a graduate tax even though the way it works in the UK is effectively as a tax. But a tax would only apply to people in the UK whereas the loan structure allows us to claw back money from, say, corporate lawyers who move to New York.

It was years ago and under a totally different student loan system. And definitely one of the big disadvantages of being working class is blundering in the dark with anything financial (a big regret hitting me in recent years was that maybe I could have claimed Swedish student benefits despite what I was wrongly told at the time). But pretty sure that it was indeed the case that you got assessed though there was a certain minimum floor if you were working.

You could choose not to claim it. Sorry reading more carefully, your point is that you can't claim a small amount. I think the reason behind this is that you won't necessarily know your income for tax year until it's over - both in terms of he income and in terms of deductions like pension, charity contributions.

Fair, but seems it would be more sensible to give them an estimated amount- "your salary is 65k a year? OK then you're entitled to X" and then make a smaller adjustment at EOY if this differs, rather than giving everything then clawing back potentially all of it.

Apparently there are moves to abolish this system and make it automatic as part of PAYE, but I can see no sign of it being imminent.

[Sheilbh]

The childcare one that gets me, and I've written to my MP about, is the way it is lost if one parent should fall below the minimum thresholds.
Not the end of the world for me  (though painful and annoying) but I can imagine this is really messing things up for some people. Leaves the whole issue of childcare a gamble for those with unreliable low income.

Yeah I can see the logic of it if the purpose of childcare is basically to encourage people back into full time paid work (which I think is reasonable). It is an issue for unreliable hours and those types of contract - but my preference would be to reduce those anyway.

Honestly my sympathy for people losing it over 100k isn't particularly high. More in the domain of "well that sucks" than anything life changing...though yes, making it gradual is better.

It's not sympathy it just seems really illogical and a badly designed system that basically if you have kids you are better off earning £99,999 or about £145,000 and literally nothing in between.

I think it's indicative of lots of specific changes announced at various budgets without anyone ever taking a step back to see if the system is still rational. The impact of those clawbacks of various benefits or entitlements is particularly weird/distorting.

But my broad view is if you get a pay rise in gross income you should also have a pay rise in net income and broadly the marginal rate increases with income rather than having these weird bumps of very high marginal rates as things are clawed back (Edit: or just removed).

[Tamas]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/nov/20/diane-abbott-edward-leigh-urge-commons-reject-assisted-dying-bill

The pair also voice concern that efforts to introduce the law have been highlighted by celebrities who are terminally ill and this could mask the potential inadvertent impact on less well-protected people.

"We do not doubt their sincerity and sympathise greatly with anyone experiencing the fear and pain that can sadly accompany terminal illness. But MPs must make laws based on their effect on every member of society, not just those whose profile gives them a prominent voice," they say.


"Imagine the pensioner whose children cannot afford houses of their own watching her limited savings, earmarked for those children, disappearing on social care and so feeling a 'duty to die'."

One more example, probably, of the profound difference supporters and opposers of this bill look at their own life and their priorities towards their families.

If I faced the prospect of <6 months of agony AND bankrupting myself and/or my family in the process, I wouldn't need malign family influences to decide the selfish AND selfless thing to do is to off myself.