Budget: High Income Child Benefit Charge threshold increased from £50,000 to £60,000

[MidnightPatrol]

"Hunt says 500,00 families will gain almost £1,300 from increase in high income threshold for child benefit

Hunt says he will change the way child benefit is paid.

At the moment the high income threshold applies to individuals, not households. That will change, he says.

And he says he is also increasing the higher income threshold. It will go up from £50,000 to £60,000.

He claims that almost half a million families will gain by almost £1,300."

Well that is not a real increase, it just takes into account inflation of the last few years. So the threshold is moved to account for inflation, that is all. It is not a real move. It is still incredibly unfair on families in areas with extremely high living costs like London.

So potentially a dual parent household would have double the threshold?

So some child benefit could still be claimed at household earnings between 120-160k.

why don't they just abolish the whole cub tax charge altogether if that's the case?

I can't see that it would possibly mean the proposed threshold would be for total household income!

It’s better than nothing. DH earns just under £60k and I’m SAHM and we had to pay back nearly the full amount in January. It’s a very unfair system, and the reforms need to go further to make fairer. Hunt mentioned ‘household incomes’ being assessed instead of individual incomes but not until 2026.

Long overdue, sadly entirely gimmicky in its presentation. It won't change to the household income model until 2026, so 2 years away, which is far too long, and they won't be in power at that point anyway! I might've been impressed if he'd raised the threshold a bit more in the interim.

According to Martin Lewis:

• Phase one is to raise the threshold to £60k, with the benefit tapering away until £80k of income.

• Phase two is to look at applying it to households rather than individuals.

I'm not sure if the later implies £60k per household or £120k per household.

Yes... If couples earning up to £160k joint are technically eligible for something, I wonder how many people would be considered unable to claim.

And what the cost of applying that would be, given it's based on household not single income.

Its 50k at the moment. Two household incomes of 49k aren't subject to the charge, thus it needs to be 98k for a single income household.

This

And he's only raised the threshold by 10k today. Why not just raise it so its akin (and not grossly unfair) from April this year? It might be a vote winner for some, hes not swayed me though!

For all those saying about household income. Don't forget that there's overhead in handling this if it's not on individual income anymore. How much do we have to invest to get back £36.25 a week max. (That's the rate for families with 2 kids which I think is the cap).

This needs clarification since I read that as if two people together earned over £60k they wouldn't be eligible (Once the new household rule comes in).

This is how I read it, but I figured I must be wrong as given average wages that would mean huge swathes of families losing it?!

It will mean a lot more people having to do self assessment too. Both DH and I are doing them since they freeze the thresholds. We are now returning the entire sum, but it's hard to get off the self assessment system once you are on it. We earned similar amounts. The first year he earned less then me, he didn't file a return assuming if I did it, it'll be fine. He got a late penalty notice for not filing. We are now just adding to the bureaucracy for filing two self assessments for the child benefit purpose every year.

This is probably going to be a really stupid question when I get the answer, but why and what are people having to pay back when their pay takes them over? Surely you are fully entitled until your wage increases then it just stops from that pay month? I don't get how people are having to pay back anything they had been entitled to until their pay rise...

It should have been household based many years ago, and says a lot about whoever manages HMRC IT or their supplier that does not happen already. After all, you have a married person's tax code.

So a single person could still claim fully up to 119k tapered to 159k perhaps to make it equitable with dual income households.

@HolidaySwears if you earn over £50k, you have to file a self assessment. This changes your tax code in the upcoming year which HMRC uses to reclaim the paid child benefit. Wages aren't so simple because many of us get bonus. It's a whole years pay they are looking at, after salary sacrifice and including benefit in kind.

Because its claimed by the lower earner, then repaid by the higher earner. Plus it tapers, so you might not to pay the whole amount back. Then there's the additional income that takes people over the limits (that little eBay business, or a rental property etc)

@LlynTegid They aren't looking at if you are married. If you are separated, both you and your ex have to file the self assessment. It's really isn't household but both parents.

People are not having enough children anymore. They should just make it universal again for up to 3 children.

Am I right to assume that this new £60k limit will only apply from next financial year (so April 24 to April 25) rather than this financial year?

What Labour, HMRC and the Tories fail/ed to see is that rewarding workers by not taxying them to the hilt like Labour did get more people off benefits and back into work.

Thereofre, you save billions in benefits and also have an extra tax income of hundreds of millions. The fools have just woken up to this, no brainer sytem.

I don't think they've specified because it's not something that's being brought in imminently. From what I understood it's just something they'll be "looking at" changing.

It's from 2026. And looking at the annoucement, it's £60k combined income.

The 2026 was the date for looking at combined income, not the £60k limit