Child Benefit Tax/Overpayment/Penalties questions

[childbenefitQs]

Absolutely panicking right now. We've been getting child benefit since DC born late 2016. At that point, OH's salary had just gone to around 50k but I don't think we will be due to pay any back then as he only earned that for part of the tax year and his pension contributions will come off it. However, for subsequent years (2017-2018 tax year and 2018-2019) I think we will. I had thought it was based on net income and only now realise it's gross minus pension, so I think due to his further pay rises, we will owe most of last year and probably most of the year before.

I have phoned them and got no help, I've tried to get OH's P60s but the company do them online and for some reason we can't get the 2019 one. He's asked HR. I've stopped the CB coming in via the online function but I couldn't do anything further. OH now has to do (we believe) 3 self assessment tax returns to figure out what we owe

He's trying to get the info together to do those this week but he says online it's saying there will be thousands to pay just in penalties for submitting these late, before we even get to the CB we have to pay back!

Has anyone been in this situation? When I tried phoning the CB department they were useless, is there anyone else I can phone to help sort it? We've never done tax returns as we're both PAYE so I'm worried we'll mess up the forms, too.

So angry it wasn't clear it was gross, even on their website now it isn't clear and the person on the phone couldn't tell me! If I'd known then I would've cancelled it ages ago to save the stress!

Has anyone had penalties to pay, and if so, how much?

We were in a similar position and had to pay back £1700 in payments. I kept it going another year as income was variable but put the money in a savings account.
We now have to pay this all back too but at least it's there.
I still claim CB to protect my NI contributions but take zero payment.
There was no penalty for paying back, the biggest PITA is having to do self assessments when you are PAYE.
If you don't get it sorted then HMRC will catch up with you so I'd do your best to get a hold of the relevant earnings info and call the helpline ASAP. Good luck

Oh, hopefully we won't have a penalty then! I don't think we'll sleep until we know!

Oh god, we had this at the beginning of the year.

We ended up having to pay back around £6k, think ours went back to around 2014 though. That included various penalties.

DP is also PAYE and the Tax Returns are a pain, we’ve cancelled it now although I think we’re entitled to some of it.

Oh no, do you remember how much the penalties were?

Not sure to be honest, have you had a letter informing you of anything?
That was when we realised, was bloody stressful.

Does your OH have a company car or any other expenses you can deduct? I THINK you can take those off to get the gross figure lower.

DP had moved jobs twice in the period they were looking at and had to request paperwork from previous employers.

They were pretty keen to get their money too. We could have been granted a repayment plan but felt the amount was such a lot we’d have been paying forever.

Sorry to be such a doom merchant!

No, it's me that has realised and I've tried to get them to help me figure it out but looks like it's down to us. I want to sort it now before it builds up even more!