Child benefit

[Miljah]

What are the rules? Struggling to make sense of them.

They've just decided we have to repay 6 years' of CB for 2 children as, despite both of us being PAYG employees, one of us earns too much.

That's a lot of money. Why haven't they picked up on this before as I have told them about our changing circumstances re education etc, every time?

What recourse do I have?

Tia.

I'm surprised you didn't read about the changes as they were well publicised. Once one person starts to earn over 50k child benefit is paid at a reduced rate. I think the website calls it a tax charge.
The only circumstance that impacts CB payment is income. Did you tell the CB office of the circumstance change? Have you earnt less than 50k over the last 3 years?

The higher earner (the person earning over £50k) needs to register for self assessment and fill in a tax return each year to pay back some or all off the child benefit that has been received. Between £50-£60k only a percentage gets paid back and once you reach £60k it all needs paid back. The onus is on the higher earner to do this as its not the responsibility of hmrc

Alternatively if one of you earns >£60k you can still claim child benefit but opt out of payment.

The change was well publicised at the time as I ended up claiming but opting out of payments in order to protect my NI credits

Ah, I see, we're foreign so didn't know.

I thought the 'changes' they were asking about where the ones they asked questions about, whether my children's circumstances have changed. Which I told them about.

As I understand it:

• if either of you earn over £50k you lose 10% of the CB for every £1k over £50k (ie if you earn over £60k you are not entitled to any).
• they don’t adjust the CB amount paid - you either claim it or you don’t.
• if you do claim it when you earn over the threasholds it’s up to the higher earner to pay the tax charge (so something to deal with on your tax return - which you would need to do for this even if you usually don’t because you are PAYE).

As I understand it (again - no expert so just my understanding) It isn’t up to them to pick up on this - it is your responsibility to do the return. It sounds as though here you guys did not fill in a tax return so have failed to pay the tax charge. Is that right?

I earn more than £60k so although we registered for CB so DH (as SAHP) would get National Insurance credits (which in turn impact his state pension in the future) we opted out of receiving any payments. Didn’t see the point in receiving the money to pay it all back!

And hope you get this all sorted soon.

I don’t see what being PAYE has to do with this. If you are earning over the threshold and receiving CB, then you have to do a tax return every year and pay back any overpayment. It doesn’t happen automatically.

Who have you been telling about your circumstances? That sounds like the sort of declaration you’d make for child tax credits. These aren’t linked to CB. For CB you have to sort it out via a tax return (or stop receiving it).

It seems highly unlikely that you have any recourse, and you will have to repay whatever you owe.

I thought they wrote to everyone when they changed the criteria.

HainaultViaNewburyPark

I thought that too, but how can you claim child tax credits if one person's income puts them out of CB payments?

It took years for tax credits to stop asking me to update my circumstances. I’d had £0 in child tax credits for over 5 years and they still kept asking. In the end I just ignored their letters...

Well, DH spoke to them and they conceded that their failure to advise people who might move into the higher tax bracket needed to do a return means they won't be fining anyone!

But you presumably still have repay the overpayment?

You may not get fined for being late doing the self assessment but I imagine you will still need to repay the overpaid child benefit