A policy that will really help working families

National has announced its Family Boost policy. Basically it recognises that childcare costs are a form of work expense for many families, and will give you a 25% tax credit towards your early childhood education costs.

This will make a huge difference to an estimated 130,000 families, providing top to $75 a week more in the hand. Over time it will help around 80% of families with children.

We used to have two children under five (now six and three). This was costing us close to $30,000 a year in early childhood education. Now that is an after tax expense, so if you pay the top marginal tax rate then you need to earn $50,000 to produce that $30,000.

The policy is targeted so those with a household income under $140,000 get the most benefit, and those over $180,000 do not benefit at all. So my household won’t personally benefit from this policy, but I still support it 100% because I do believe in targeting assistance.

National will fund this by reducing the spend on public sector consultants by $400 million a year. That won’t be difficult to be honest, because Labour has had so many daft schemes which agencies have had to pay tens of millions to consultants to work on, and then eventually they drop them.

I, for one, would much rather have my taxes go on helping low and middle income families with young children, than paying $250 an hour consultants to design a billion dollar cycle bridge or merge together two state media companies that have nothing in common.

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