To ask how many of you know about the Child Benefit Charge?

[Ballstothisdotcom]

I had to repay over £6k a couple of years ago. Had to get out a loan to do it. The children were mine and not my husbands and I had always claimed as a single parent so just didn’t stop.

Have just read daily mail sad face story about this happening to another family.

My sister and her husband have always claimed it. They have never had it questioned. I just wonder if HMRC are blanket mail sending and hoping people will be honest.

I genuinely had no idea about it until we got the letter. It also seems grossly unfair that two people can earn £49999 per year but if one person goes over it you have to repay it. In our case it was my husband who went over the threshold just slightly so we had to pay back from the day we moved in together.

Any one else?

I was well aware of the salary cap, but not the company car issue. How much is a car worth? How do we find out? What do we need to do next?

Your P11d will give you all the figures for your company car.

Thank you.

I haven’t even thought about child benefit for sixteen years. What the what now???? How the fuck did I not know about this and why have they never written to me?????

I think there is some bad advice on here. Bit too chancey for SAHP to claim it and then pay it back. Why not just claim the NI pension credits and not take the child benefit? It also means my children will get their NI number at 16.

It’s not like interest rates are high at the moment, surely any interest gained on whacking it into a savings account is going to see you rolling in it!

Why did they bring this rule in? Apologies if someone has already answered this question. What was the rationale behind it?

How old are your DCs OP ? We knew about it, it caussd a huge hooohah in 2013 when it was brought in. I like the way PP referred to it as a tax trap - it is, there is a marginal tax rate of 60-70% on money earnt between £50- 60,000. Between 2013-15 with 2 primary age children DH and I both kept our earning just this side of £50,000. So we were one of those household with a joint income of £98,000 paying almost no higher rate tax and recieving CHB. When I got this job in 2015 and became ft, I cancelled it by going online. It was amazingly straight forward must have taken all of 5 minutes.

Now in a new tax trap between £100,000 and £125,000 I do however expect (and generally get) no sympathy whatsoever

I didn't know they wanted you to pay it all back at once! This explains why DH had a big grump about it a while back, and I did say "I told you so" to him. He hadn't shsred with me exactly how much commission he'd made and because CB goes into an account I had before we married he won't have thought too much about it, He keeps getting brown tax envelopes, but I've no idea why. I'm beginning to think the system is very flawed.

Two years ago I got a letter saying I might owe something and I needed to look into it. I had to gather proof of my earnings and also of my pension contributions from my employer for a retrospective year and submit it all to the child benefit office. It transpired luckily that I narrowly escaped paying anything back. However, the next year I did owe a bit as I had had a pay rise, so they adjusted my tax code this year so I could pay back what I owed in instalments. They were very helpful re the whole thing. I then changed jobs in August last year and earn over the threshold now so phoned them back up and stopped my benefit altogether. They have adjusted my tax code again to pre-empt me paying anything back next year for the amount I received between April and August last year. Am hoping next tax year to be all settled up with a normal tax code, fingers crossed. If they hadn’t written to me I think I wouldn’t have sorted it all out and also would have ended up with a large amount to pay back so I do sympathise.

@CrazyHorse wow how can you not know what your husband earns and what those brown envelopes are,? it could be many things. He could be in debt up to his eyeballs and could leave you in a big pile of poo.

@Xenia there is a box on the form that allows you to maintain the NI contributions without claiming the CB.

I'm no where near that bracket anyway.

Yanbu about the calculation being unfair.

YABU to not have realised, this was being publicised absolutely everywhere at the time.

Yes I knew about it and ensured my DH increased his pension contributions to limit the impact whilst he's in the 50k-60k bracket. Once he (or I, I suppose tho I'm just just under 50k at present and he's just under 60k) goes well over 60k I will stop claiming it altogether.
However I had failed to account for his benefits in kind, mainly medical insurance (which he never uses and doesn't have a clue what it even covers...) and therefore had to repay a small amount this year. I expect we'll have to repay more next year. The main 'issue' is DH gets a sizeable bonus which I need to take into account but it's difficult to plan fully for.
You don't have to repay it all at once, if you do the assessment before 31st Dec it can just be deducted via next year's tax.
Also you need to ensure you take into account donations to charity to reduce the tax bill. It reduced mine by a couple of hundred pounds.
Finally - yes the system is unfair in terms of joint income not being taken into account however a couple with 1 earning 100k should be better off than one where 2 earn 50k due to costs of working... but not by much I suppose.. it's difficult to see what the ideal system is.

Actually - did the tax calculations on 100k salary - its a bit shit (of course it's still a lot of money but it's a lot of tax too). Certainly joint income would make more sense.

But 2 workers means more tax over a lifetime. The goverment is incentivising both parents to stay working with IMO very good reason.

@hopefulhalf exactly. Its the same with the 30 hours. the gov wants more workers & more tax.

We knew about it

There were a few pissed off people in my social group, though as a friend said it did get easier to peg the income of a family (if you were being nosy) depending on who was complaining

We continued to claim and dh paid it back, mainly because we didn't trust the government to not balls it up

Or change the goalposts

(Again...)

A one earner household on £98k would also have less cash than two earners on £49k each because a lot more of the income will be taxed at the 40% rate.

catspyjamas123 that depends partly on how many children of what she's they have and what childcare the two earners have to pay for to allow them both to work.

In a family with a two and a half year old and eleven month old twins it's perfectly likely that the family are better off paying a nanny than nursery, especially if both parents commute into London by train or work shifts in healthcare or long hours. Once a full time we'll qualified nanny is employed the two earners family won't be better off than the one earner on double salary plus Sahm doing all childcare.

Taxing couples together usually penalises women in everyday practice and countries which do all tax and benifits as couples have fewer working mothers. That might be in the children's best interest when children are under 3, but it's not in women's best interest when all their children are older and they face extra barriers to getting back to work.

Of what ages not she's

@ItWillBeBetterinAugust I mean a one earner family with just one parent - like myself! Over the limit for child benefit. I have paid for all sorts of childcare over the years to keep this job going - every kind, I think. Nursery, nanny, after-school, childminder, au pair. I also had to pay my ex-husband to go away. Now it’s just me supporting the kids. I had forgotten all about child benefit - basically had forgotten it even exists. But if there were two parents each earning more than half my income we would get it. At least I don’t have to feed another fully-grown adult, that’s the best I can say!

It was all over the news at the time.

catspyjamas123 one parent families - yes absolutely, you're right! 100% A lot of people on the thread are talking about one high earner, one sahp though - apologies I assumed you were too. The point stands for a one high earner, one sahp versus two parents earning 49k each.