Recently, a friend was talking about entitlements. He said it was unreasonable to want the unemployed or single parents to be “pushed” back to work…

I said I sympathised, but it probably took 3 people working full time to keep one single mum on benefits…

He didn’t believe me so I did some rough calculations, and I was pretty close in my estimate. He still doesn’t believe me, but at least I know he’s wrong :-)

My working out

I highlight assumptions as I go

Average salaries

A BBC Story on average Salaries - I took the median at around £25k

A tax calculator - gave the following figures for £25k earner

Gross Income £25,000.00

Tax-Free Allowance £6,475.00
Taxable Amount £18,525.00
Tax £3,705.00
National Insurance £2,120.80
Tax + NI £5825.80

( for £50k the numbers are

Gross Income £50,000.00
Tax-Free Allowance £6,475.00
Taxable Amount £43,525.00
Tax £9,930.00
National Insurance £4,259.60
Tax + NI 14189.6)

I then generated a single parent (1 boy 10-16, 1 girl 0-9) living in Manchester.

Assuming a Manchester Band C property with single person reduction they’d be paying council tax of £884.65

Using figures from Housing Benefit Update they would be entitled to 3 bedroom HB [3 bedroom (1 boy 10-16, 1 girl 0-9)] which would amount to housing benefit of  £126.92

Using these figures and claiming no other income, I entered these in to the Money Saving Expert Benefit Check site

This generated the numbers below:

Entitlement per year

Means-tested income entitlements

  • Tax Credits £5,662.02
  • Income Support £3,529.28

Means-tested bill reductions

  • Council Tax Benefit £884.67
  • Housing Benefit £6,636.10 

Other income entitlements

  • Child Benefit £1,762.02
  • Total Entitlements £18,474.09  

Doing the maths, that means it does - in fact - take 3.17 people on £25k salary (or 1.3 people on £50k) their entire tax and NI take  to pay for this one single parent.  

Which means that the rest of us have to take up the slack for education, street cleaning, policing, health care, defence…