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?

Yes I knew about it & neither DH nor I earn anywhere near 50k.

@CatLandlady - but that is how the system is set up: you can claim the £20 per week, and your partner pays back some of it via tax if earning over £50,000 (or all of it if over £60,000).

As an aside, I don’t understand why your higher-earning partner is letting you feel the need for £20 per week when you are raising the child that you have together.

Yes it’s really sad we got the same problem my husband it’s only earner he works 17hours and his wedges just few grand above 50 I can’t work because I got disable child I can’t get any cares allowance because I am not British citizens yet so yes received the letter few months ago and they want 85percent tax back what ever we received in last 6 years from child benefits

Crikey, I've just seen this, l know about it but and we don't earn anything near that but partner was made redundant in October and with redundancy will have more than 50k, so k guess l have to pay back this year's child benefit, his much is the fine please??

You wont get a fine as you are still within the current tax year. The fine is given for doing late tax returns. He needs to register for self assessment to do a tax return at the end of the tax year. Up to £60k you only pay a proportion back and it is all paid back once you reach £60k

@Boujee - there's no fine: if at the end of the tax year, you find your income is over £50,000 then you tell HMRC about any relevant CB received in your household, and HMRC claw some or all of it back. Fines are only for not telling them about a previous tax year after the deadline for that tax year (31 Jan after the tax year ends).

Ah ok thanks, so he earned 30k then got 44k in redundancy, but l think the first 30k in redundancy is tax free (l think?) So with his 30k wage and remaining 14k taxable redundancy that takes him to 44k taxable income so are we ok ?? Or will we have to pay?, hope this makes sense

Wow...here in Ireland EVERYONE gets child benefit. €140 per child, if you have Multiples( twins etc obvs) you get €210 per child I think. It seems the uk created a very unfair way of means testing .

It is a bit ridiculous. It was thought up by Osborne and Cameron on the eve of a party conference as an eye-catching way to save about £2billion, which could be portrayed as "we're only taking CB off the rich who are most able to do without it". They could have put the higher rate of tax up to 42% and achieved the same for the Treasury, while spreading the burden across all higher rate taxpayers.

And in 6 or so years, they have not increased the threshold of £50k, so it's catching more and more people.

Interesting that the idea of child benefit originally was it was paid to mum so that wayward dads didn’t spend every penny in the pub and there was still cash to feed the kids. In the old days etc. Except it seems most of the cases here are still determined by the dad’s income. And if the dad wants he can still withhold money from the mother and kids and she has lost the benefit. The patriarchy lives on.

When it first came in, I was pregnant with dc1 and DH was earning around 55k. We just didn’t bother applying as it seemed like more hassle than it was worth and by the end of the year he was over 60k anyway with bonus. I earned more like 30k.

When DC2 was born they had changed the form and you could tick a box to say “I am registering but please don’t pay me” so we did that in case in ever out of work and need the NI credits.

The reason that it’s not “combined” income is that it’s much more difficult for HMRC to find you. Every couple would need to prove that they are not earning over a combined limit. So it’s cheaper for the govt to just force the highest earner to do a tax return if they are claiming it.

Other benefits relating to children are done in this way too, tax free childcare and 30 hours childcare are only available if the highest earner earns less than 100k. At least in this case, those people are already filling out tax returns because if you earn over 100k (even if it’s all PAYE) you have to do a self assessment.

Like most benefits, totally unfair

My situation with child benefit was horrendous. My children's dad made a child benefit claim even though I have our 2 kids full time. I didn't receive a letter or anything from them! Just noticed when my payments stopped. They were giving him the full benefits, i had to send letters from their school and doctors to prove they lived with me

Yes I was aware of it, I was furious at the time. DH earned just over threshold, I was sahm , we totally relied in child benefit for essentials. when we lost it it was very tough. We were portrayed by David Cameron as being in the richest 10% in the country ,err no David, think that's you not us!
What made it worse was that very good friends earned 40k each and could still get it, even though their net family income exceeded ours by far.
It's not fair but families like ours were easy pickings for conservative budget cuts, relatively speaking it didn't impact that many people and was sold as cutting benefits for the rich - strangely thou millionaire pensioners can still get their winter fuel payments!

This is a huge bug bare of mine. Some years my husband is above the threshold, some years he's not. We never know whether he will be or not as his job changes constantly. I don't work ( at home looking after 2 children) and he works VERY long hours, average 60-80 pw, to cover us as a family. We claim ever year as we never know whether his wage will be above or below the threshold, many times we have had to pay it back which infuriates me as my husband works long hours, usually works away from home so we only see him at weekends or every other weekend, pays for b and bs while he's away and a massive chunk of his wage on petrol as he usually is working 200-300 miles from home. Our neighbours both have good jobs with a good wage. Work 9-5, Monday to Friday, home every evening and weekend and earn much more per hour than my husband but they are entitled to claim CB as they are both just below the threshold. So annoying. I don't see why they can't work it out on your hourly wage rather than your total annual income. Surely people that have to work many more hours to provide for their family are instantly in a worse position!

Catlandlady - that is exactly how the system is set up! Just claim CB and let your partner sort out his tax return and if he does it on time it will be deducted out of his tax throughout the year.

Others not being sure how much you/partner will earn - CB is based on last tax year's earnings so you have some time to see it coming and the 'tax' can be paid back via the tax code throughout the year so worth it.
Don't forget to deduct charitable donations and pension contributions! Someone on a gross salary of 60k is unlikely to have to pay all of CB (if any) in practice.

I've been aware of it since it was introduced but only this year is there a possibility I may have to repay some. I need to check where my pension contributions take me though as I think that may just nudge me under.
No matter what I earn I will always claim and receive it and pay back as necessary. I don't trust the government not to change the rules for new claimants (like the two child policy for other benefits). My circumstances could change significantly in the future and I'm a single parent so wouldn't have a safety net of another wage coming in. I'd hate to not be able to claim again in the future because of a rule change when it could make a huge difference.

@bencrone03 what a delight your ex is to take the money that is meant for your children 🙄 I can’t believe how awful some men can be.

We missed it because when we first claimed it in 2008 everyone received it, when the rules changed in 2013 DH wasn’t over the threshold.
Through time his salary increased (mainly through overtime) and I’ll be honest I never gave CB a second thought.
Yes before anyone points it out I appreciate it was our job to check, but we never had any correspondence from HMRC until the letter with the big bill.

I've got a pension review later with my workplace pension provider. I'm going to ask for some clarification around figures to see if I should be contacting the child benefit office. I'm really not sure, but this has worried me. I got a lump sum back payment last month I wasn't aware I'd be getting - backdated pay to April 2019 amounting to 3% increase. I'm dropping my hours to 4 days a week next month which will take me comfortably below the threshold.

It should be a £99,999.99 household income before it stops or you pay tax. I don't think it's fair that a single parent family unit would have to sacrifice it if they earnt say £55,000 but a household with both parents earning £48,000 so £96,000 in total would still get it. Seems ridiculous

Boujee, check ideally with an accountant if the £30k is tax free (the law just changed on that point I think so definitely check as it may be more complex these days). However if the £30k is a tax free pay out then it does seem he remains under the amount .
See www.icaew.com/technical/tax/tax-faculty/taxline/taxline-2018/november-2018/1-taxing-termination-payments for the 2018 changes. There are also some national insurance rules changes from April 2020 on redundancy pay outs too but not yet in force on those ones.

I said this on another thread but you could argue that it's not ridiculous for two earners to get it because they are both paying (quite a lot of) tax so is it so unreasonable that they should get something out of the system they are paying into?

But I would basically query whether we should even have child benefit anymore with climate change. There are too many people in the world anyway so maybe we shouldn't be encouraging people to have children. Climate change is going to force some very unpopular decisions.

We are one of the families effects.

DH earns just over £60k and I don't work because I home educate our autistic son. We also have four children. Once you include the loss of child benefit and 40% tax, he has an effective tax rate of 70% on earnings between £50-60k.

*We are one of the families it affects.