Improvement has been significant but childcare is still patchy, it is appallingly expensive and employers, in the main, fail to pay a fair contribution. In much of Europe, in contrast, bosses meet up to a third of childcare costs.
What is a \”fair contribution\” for an employer to make to childcare costs?
For just as with employers\’ NI or any other part of compensation that isn\’t part of wages, the compensation will come out of the wages. Mandate that employers must cover childcare costs and two things will happen: wages will fall while compensation remains static and there will be an increasing reluctance to employ those who have children that require childcare.
So we come back to the question. What is the \”fair contribution\” that an employer must make to childcare costs? And why should such a contribution, whatever that fair level is, be paid as childcare instead of to the employee who then gets to use it to pay for whatever they want?
Saves on NI, at least. Childcare provision being an exempt allowance. There is also the “enough size to deal with the red tape” thing – if the employer is large enough (or can band together with other local employers) to run their own creche.
For various reasons, I used to suggest that the bank ran the pub closest to its main IT centres. You could do it at cost and there are a number of non-obvious advantages …
As cluefree as the economically illiterate know nothing here
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/businesses-wont-run-away-if-we-tax-them-a-little-more-3276615.html
Someone really needs to forcibly explain how tax incidence works to these people.