EXCERPTS.
WORKING families face losing more than 2,500 pounds a year from today in sneaky changes to tax credits that will hit thousands of parents.
Many people will be shocked to find how much they stand to lose in the technical changes to Working Tax Credits made in last year's emergency budget by the Tory-led Coalition.
Chancellor George Osborne made no reference to them in last month's Budget but they have been exposed by the TUC, which has launched a tax credit calculator to help families work out what they will lose. Working parents who get tax credits can add their household details to estimate how they will be hit by the tax changes kicking in today.
The TUC warns that working families could be the hardest hit by the combination of tax credit cuts, the rise in VAT and the three-year freeze in child benefits - as well as the cut for households with a higher rate taxpayer.
They also face wages being out-stripped by inflation and deep spending cuts to essential services such as Sure Start family centres.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "Working families are bearing the brunt of Government austerity measures."
"The Government must do more to help hard pressed families by protecting the public services they rely on and ensuring a greater share of the tax burden is placed on the banks that helped create the deficit, rather than the working families who are being made to pay for it." The calculator shows how typical families will be hit in the pocket.
A family with two earners of 25,000 and 15,000 pounds-a-year, two children - a baby and a toddler - paying 400 pounds a week in childcare for 45 weeks of the year, could lose around 2,600 pounds a year by April 2012.
-reprinted from The Mirror