Child benefit

[Karigan195]

I have recently been promoted to the point where I am paying back most of the child benefit every year. On the new pay scale I probably won’t qualify for child benefit at all next year.

I have read a few things that suggest it might be worthwhile to just keep getting it and paying it back because it qualifies you for something else but getting completely confused on the subject.

Is there any point to getting it and paying it back or should I just cancel.

It’s very pertinent at the moment as the delightful tax man wanted me to pay back two years in one go this year (year gone and next year) until I queried it!

You are thinking of ni credits until child is 13, but that is irrelevant if you are working as you make ni contributions anyway.

My husband owes over the threshold but I still claim child benefit and then need pay it back at end of year. Because I only work part time and a low earner by claiming it it enables me to get the National Insurances credits so I get my gov pension.
We just put it in separate bank account and pay it back at end of year.

*earns over threshold

@LIZS OP does mean child benefit.

Whoops, sorry LIZs, mis read your post. You are correct

I was under the impression that you still got NI credits even if you stopped claiming it. We got fed up paying it back at the end of the year so stopped it.

I thought you could still register but opt out and that gave you the NI benefits but without receiving the money?
I need to do it because I’ve never filled in any of the forms and I’m worried if I don’t my children won’t get their NI numbers in the future. Does anyone know if there is anything else it affects?

If you are both working then there's no point claiming it, however if one is a stay at home parent then it's worth it until your youngest is 12 for the ni credits

You can be registered for it but request that they don't pay it to you so then you get the ni credits but don't have to mess around paying it back.

There are two components to CB - the NI credit and the cash benefit. You can claim both, or just claim the NI and not the cash. We do the latter - DH is a high earner so we wouldn’t be allowed to keep the cash, so we just claim the NI credits in my name. But if OP is working and already getting full NI credits then there’s no point in claiming anything.

Thanks all. I think I’m just going to cancel it. Paying it back always seems to hurt more than not getting it 😂. I think it’s because I hate the tax man anyway 😜.

You can submit your entitlement then opt out of actually claiming - just means you don't need to worry about the tax return

We claim it and pay it back

Just too lazy to cancel it

I think if anything happens to your relationship if you are in receipt of CB in your name you can claim for other benefits as in paper you are seen as the resident parent.

It's not absolute but it makes things easier.

It stops an abusive exH putting in a claim for CTC and getting the resident parents entitlement. They can still try, but it's not as easy and questions are asked.

Ahhh that isn’t an issue as I chucked my incredibly useless ex husband out years and years ago. It’s all very civilised and almost friendly now!

Remember it is your income after pension contributions. If you are close to the threshold it might be worth increasing your contributions to bring your net income down to the level where you can claim CB?