You may not have realised during the General Election campaign that the Conservatives planned to cut the incomes of working people on lower salaries by more than £1,000.
It wasn't something they shouted about.
Indeed, David Cameron successfully positioned the Conservatives as the party that was on the side of working people, wherever they were on the pay scale.
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But it now seems clear that the Budget on July 8 will include cuts to tax credits paid to people in work, as part of the Government's attempts to reduce the cost of the welfare state by £12 billion.
Some newspapers appear to have been briefed that the plan is to reduce tax credit payments to 2003 levels, which would save the Treasury £5 billion.
This would mean families with two children losing up to £1,690 a year.
It may be worth noting that one trick used by governments of all political persuasions is to leak bad news and make it them sound worse than it really is - so that when the official announcement is made, you're almost tempted to breathe a sigh of relief.
We'll have to wait and see what the exact figures are. But Cameron has all but confirmed that tax credits are to be cut in some form.
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Questioned in the House of Commons by Harriet Harman, Labour's acting leader, he refused to deny the newspaper reports.
She asked him: "Is it not inevitable that cuts in tax credits for working families, unless employers raise their wages immediately, will mean that children are worse off?"
In reply, he talked about the importance of cutting the deficit and claimed that under Labour "the whole country was plunged into poverty".
Across the West Midland county, which includes Birmingham, the Black Country, Coventry and Solihull, 110,000 working families with children receive both working tax credit and child tax credit. There are 220,200 children living in these households, according to figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions.
Another 40,200 working households – with 83,500 children – receive just child tax credit.
And 28,500 households without children benefit from working tax credit.
In Birmingham alone, 64,400 working households with children receive either working tax credit, child tax credit or both – affecting 138,200 children.
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And 12,700 households without children in Birmingham receive working tax credit. All these figures only include families where somebody is in work.
But it seems that these are the families the Government has in its sights.
It seems a far cry from Mr Cameron's vision of a "one nation" government, which ensures every section of society benefits from economic growth. But the fact is that the Government has to cut spending somehow.
The Conservative election manifesto included a pledge to "find £12 billion from welfare savings".
And there's a limit to how much can be stripped from people who are unemployed, as they only get around three per cent of the total welfare budget anyway. And it's not as if people on the dole are rolling around in money.
Many people would argue that those who can work should work, but people of all political persuasions probably agree there should be a safety net for someone who loses their job.
About 40 per cent of welfare spending goes on pensioners. The Government's not going to touch this, partly because pensioners vote.
But once again, many people would agree that someone who has worked hard all their life needs support once they retire.
And people actually start thinking about their pension long before they reach pensionable age. Anyone who pays into a pension scheme will be receiving letters giving them a hint about how much they will have to live on once they retire - and for many of us, it's pretty terrifying.
So, working people it is. There's also a political dimension to this, as some Conservatives believe that Labour governments used tax credits to bring working people into the welfare system, in an attempt to create a new class of client Labour voters.
David Cameron says he wants to end a system in which tax credits subsidise low wages. Instead, he said: "We need to move from a low wage, high tax, high welfare society to a higher wage, lower tax, lower welfare society."
This sounds great, and Labour MPs such as Steve McCabe (Lab Selly Oak) say they support the ambition.
But the problem is that the Government has the ability to cut tax credits – and not the ability to force employers to increase wages, beyond increasing the minimum wage faster than inflation which provides some limited help for people at the very bottom of the pay scale.
If Cameron's policy is to make sense he needs to explain how exactly he plans to make employers pay more.