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?

We got a letter in October saying we ’might’ owe. I went over all our paperwork and in the end rang them and found out that the lease car my DH took out in 2016 was seen as a tax benefit so they add it onto his annual income. This is what took us over the £50k by quite a lot. We had no clue! Fast forward and we owe just over £2000 with another grand probably being owed for the last tax year. I was distraught, never intentionally owed anyone money. HMRC agreed it was a genuine error and we were fortunate they chose not to impose penalties but the letters have been quite threatening and left me feeling like a criminal.

At the time, I actually wrote and complained about the 2 v 1 income disparity and was told it was too complicated to deal with joint incomes.
Talk about lack of joined up thinking - they already had that information to deal with child/working tax credit, which is calculated on joint income

@herringbone31 yes I appreciate that it is not a terrible amount, even after train fares and bills are paid. We're still not exactly rolling in it though.

@MumW yes I agree, complete rubbish as all your earnings are online now, this is how UC calculate your payments for a joint claim, they can see exactly how much you earn from the HMRC portal. If you earn extras from say overtime UC know and cut your payments, so surely they can do this for child benifit, again it effects families with a sahp which is so unfair.

Very unfair but id be surprised is no one knew about it as very well advertised. My dsis misses out as just over but she earns £4000 if that in a year.

I knew about it in advance as I follow tax law - just happens to be an interst of mine. I claimed it to the bitter end (sons now at university so stopped when they went ) and then paid it all back each year which was no problem.

Yes we had to pay back and I’m so upset about it. My husband went over the threshold due to overtime so he can cover the costs while I went on maternity. Which basically made us have to pay back child benefit so put us in more loans and the over time wasn’t worth it in the end.

But I kept child benefit for the sake of pension as I’m not working at the moment

I do not agree with the universal benefit being removed however. I pay an awful lot of tax and child benefit was the one thing I got from the state really and in the 1940s my doctor uncle even got a council house as the whole point of the welfare state was we aall pay in and even if well off all got the free housing etc etc. Nowe they just seem to expect high earners to pay in and pay in and pay more and more and get less and less - not even a single person allowance. It is as if the state hates those who contribute the most tax.

@theneverendinglaundry. Some people earn 15000 for a household.

Some people rely on benefits

You’re not rolling in it. But better off than many many others.

I knew about it and a) don’t have kids and b) don’t live in the uk

When family allowance was brought in it was to alleviate child poverty - particularly in families where the mother didn't work or earnt very little, it wasn't intended to subsidise wealthy families. The way the child benefit charge has been enforced is clumsy and unfair - although I agree with the OP who said most higher rate tax payers would gain financially from going a tax return anyway.

However lots of things are clearly unfair. If my eldest was born 6 months to a year earlier I would have got the free money for attending antenatal appointments and he would have got hundreds of pounds in savings. But he wasn't, so we didn't. If we had bought a house a year or so later and not at the height of the property boom we could have benefited from first time buyer tax breaks and possibly made a profit rather than a loss... but we didn't so we didn't. Moaning about life being unfair is such a waste of time.

Nowe they just seem to expect high earners to pay in and pay in and pay more and more and get less and less - not even a single person allowance. It is as if the state hates those who contribute the most tax.

Not really. I'll use a right-of-centre source here for emphasis.

The bottom 10 per cent of households lost 43.2 per cent of their gross income to taxes in 2008-9. In 2017-18, that had risen to 47.6 per cent.

The top 10 per cent of households lost 32.9 of their gross income to taxes in 2008-9. In 2017-18, that had risen to 33.5 per cent.

www.taxpayersalliance.com/the_tax_burden_on_households_2019

Poor households pay a much larger percentage of their overall income in tax than richer households do. That said, I still think Child Benefit should be universal and there are better, cleaner ways to ask higher earners for a slightly larger contribution.

The most recent case I saw that n the media was where the family didn't realise in job perks such as there company car counted towards the income and this put them over the threshold.

I stopped claiming in 2013 when in my opinion it was quite well publicised. My eldest son is not my husbands but it was made quite clear to me that if I continued to claim child benefit then my husband would be responsible for paying it back in tax at the end of the year.i stopped claiming straight away as could see that it would be less hassle in the long run.

I agree it's not fair that two people earning the same as one person on a higher income can continue to claim.

I think the question you should ask is, “How many people didn’t bother to read the claim form?”

It is on the first page.
It is has a great big section title.
It is the first question.
It has 3 handy boxes to help you.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/807955/CH2_online.pdf

I agree about the unfairness of 1 person vs a household - I’m hit by that myself. But there is no reason not to know about the £50K taper.

I don’t have much sympathy for the case mentioned here where the taxable benefit of a company car tipped them over. I should admit I haven’t read the actual case. But - if you’re sufficiently intelligent to hold down a job paying that kind of money, you’re intelligent enough to read the letter that I very much expect came with his contract, which will have had a disclaimer around their being a tax implication that was the employee’s responsibility to understand.

It’s so confusing. I think we could probably claim some of it but I’m not sure how much we would need to pay back so I haven’t. We did used to claim it, then stopped but circumstances have changed again so I should look into it really.

I’m always surprised when people don’t know about this.

It is very unfair re the 2 incomes of 49,999 thing vs one of 50+ however dh & I have massively benefited from that so we are the lucky ones. And I suppose have potentially had more childcare costs than families with a single income.

Dh earns over the threshold now so we still claim but repay each year with self assessment.

Sorry OP, but I voted YABU. I wasn’t even a parent yet when the changes were introduced and I remember reading about 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

Surely if he only just went over, you’ll barely have to pay much back?

Ellisandra, when I started claiming child benefit the £50k rule didn’t exist. So there was no information on the claim form. I never receive any communication about the child benefit. I would never have gone onto the website. I never saw any of the publicity about it. Thanks to MN I know it’s an issue.

We don’t have a company car but I would certainly not have understood what a taxable benefit was. If a letter said there were tax implications then (until I saw the publicity about this recent case thanks to Facebook) I would have no idea this meant child benefit. It’s entirely possible to still believe it is a universal benefit and so have nothing to do with income level. Even if I did know about the 50k then I would never have made the link between a company car and child benefit. I very much doubt a letter would specifically mention child benefit. It would mention tax implications which frankly lost people don’t understand.

Maybe it is unfair but the whole tax v benefits sytem is unfair. People tend only to complain about the bits that are unfair and disadvantage them though rather than think about the whole picture. We could and should re-think the system but we are in a selfish age and that is unlkiely to happen

I thought it was quite well publicised. I claimed the first 3 years after having ds1, year one we were eligible but then when DS1 turned 1 DH changed job but I continued claiming just to keep up my NI contributions, then paying it back each year was crippling. So when ds2 was 1 I filled in a form which meant I don't claim but still get the NI. I've never filled in the form when dd was born but I suppose I should. Not sure what difference it makes tho.

I was surprised when I spoke to my sister about benefits and said we aren't eligible for any and she said everyone could get CB and that her SIL claimed and her DH was definitely a really high earner (over 150k) and she never paid any back. She wouldn't have it that everyone isn't eligible. I assume because the information isn't relevant to some people they just don't take it in.

IMO the thing that is wrong is the fact that if you live with someone, even if you’re not married and that person earns over the stated amount, you still aren’t entitled to child benefit for the children you have who aren’t your partner’s.

When people cohabit there are no guarantees that their money is joint or that the partner is necessarily contributing to the children’s upkeep. People are often quick to state that someone should pay for their own children, and yet the system means that even if their partner isn’t paying towards their children they still aren’t entitled to CB.

My eXH’s partner has children who aren’t his. He earns over the threshold but she isn’t entitled to claim for those children. They have joint children and I can see the reasons there, but not for the children who aren’t his biologically.

@DisorganisedOrganiser
Exactly the same here. There's a lot of assumptions being made about people not reading forms or letters properly. We started claiming in 2012 when this charge didn't exist. We certainly haven't had anything from the CB office since.

I’m pretty sure it was well publicised. I know when my husband got a pay rise I wasn’t sure if the car benefit would be included to take us over. I phoned HRMC and they didn’t really have a clue what to advise and I just thought it was best just to cancel it. annoyingly they did try to charge us when my husband did his tax and bill us - thankfully i checked his tax return - and realised the mistake! I’m not sure how all the systems link!