To think the child benefit arrangements are unfair?

[MobLife]

Only just clocked this and I'm still not 100% sure I've got it right because it seems wrong...
So if 2 parents are both earning £49,999 and hence taking in almost £100k household income they can continue to claim full CB

But

2 parents where the household income is way under that (lets say for arguments sake £70k) and one parent is earning the greater proportion (between £50-60k) will either get a much reduced CB amount or potentially nothing at all?

How is that fair??!

This affected me - was on £51k as a single parent when this came in. When my children where 1 & 3 i lost CB, had to pay nursery fees and overnight cover when i travelled for work (often). My new tax rates were also.kicking in.

I had also sold my house due to marriage/divorce problems and was now paying 3 times as much in rent. It was tough to get to the end of the month then. Single parents with similar earnings/aged kids will be in an even tougher spot today.

As others have said this, plus tax regime are extremely unfair on single parents.

The rules came in for my final couple of years claiming. I understand when there’s two incomes near the threshold it doesn’t make sense that they are still eligible to claim but our joint income was under the £50k so the lone parent you refer to has more ££ coming in than we did.

This isn’t true!

You should complete the form, then question 62 answer as ‘don’t pay me’. It says explicitly at the top of the form that even if you select don’t pay me, by having completed and returned the Child Benefit Claim form (CH2) you will get NI credits until the child turns 12, and they’ll get their NI number at 16.

It is a funny quirk but it reflects that if you have one earner on 80k and another non earner, you have a choice to increase your income by going out and working. The benefits system as a whole is intended to discourage reliance, the whole point is to ensure that choosing to work always makes you better off.

Two earners on 49k each have probably already done everything they can to maximise their income.

The 30 hours childcare is another one - if you have one high earner and one SAHP here's little evidence that the extra 15 hours has educational benefit, and it doesnt need to be given for childcare as there's a SAHP.

I agree OP

Not quite. Child Benefit was formally known as Family Allowance. It switched names to Child Benefit in the 1970s.

After WW2, the Conservatives reduced food subsidy and then increased family allowance so food could still be purchased and this meant families were more likely to keep children in education rather than sending them out to work to earn money for food. They then rolled it out to all families with school children

Nothing to do with access to a mans money, more of an incentive to stay in school and receive an education to lead to better paid jobs rather than working poorly paid jobs from the age of 10.

It’s not fair. And it’s either for children in which case it shouldn’t be means tested, or it’s for parents in which case it should be rolled into the wider benefits system.

The child benefit system and the child tax free childcare are both ridiculous! You can earn a hell of a lot and still claim them same as someone who doesn't earn very much! It depresses me!

The bit that i found hard is my husband doesnt tell me how much he earns. His salary goes into his account and he puts some money in a joint account which covers about 65% of our bills.

I have never known how much he earns and after getting a letter saying about fraud i had to explain that he needed to fill out a tax form if he was earning over a certain amount or i could go to prison. He said he would sort out tax forms if they were relevant.

Yes, I'm a single parent and don't get cb. I do pay £2500 per month in tax and NI though!!

Take home pay on salary of £100k is £66.6
Take home on 2 X £50k is £37x2 so £74k

Second family gets CB.

There are a lot of comments and I haven't read them all so apologies if this has been brought up already. 100% agree with the OP, this is a real bugbear of mine. Did you also know that this is calculated on taxable income? Someone, rightly, pointed this out that if high earners put more into their pension to bring their taxable income down to £50k they can keep the whole child benefit. Please everyone be aware that this also works the other way i.e. work benefits will INCREASE your taxable income and reduce your child benefit. For example a worker earning £50k merrily claiming their child benefit but also has a company car with fuel could actually have a taxable income of £60k and wouldn't be entitled to any child benefit at all. If you or your partner get a p11d please check you aren't claiming too much CB.

If you were on £51k you should have only lost 10% of your child benefit, not all of it.
I'm not at all trying to downplay the hardship you went through at all, just trying to say if you are currently earning under £60k (the point where you lose all of the benefit) and not claiming CB then please look to get it restarted

Which ignores single parents entirely. I suppose the rationale is that the NRP will be paying maintenance…if only!

To be fair, the second family is likely to have childcare and commuting costs that a high earner with a SAHP probably won't have.

However, a single parent earning £100k is likely to have high childcare costs.

But people definitely need to check out their own situation regarding pensions, company cars etc as it's not necessarily the case that you lose all your CB if you earn £52k. For people paying into a pension but without a company car, they can keep all their CB until quite a bit above £50k.

Absolutely this

If your not together with your DH. You can claim benefits and live in the same household. Also for abuse cases you definitely could.

I've read others posts too... but if I earn 50k o don't think I would be bother about £84 a per month for the first child and doesn't it reduce to around £50 for the 2nd DC?!.

That is interesting. I think i simply opted out of CB because i was terrified of getting it wrong. I thought( have a memory of) I had to pay some back but maybe it was another tax bill that hit at the same time. The whole time period is a bit of a blur now!

I dont qualify now - but good advice for others in a similar position. Thank you

After childcare, clothes and travel costs that was my food money! And back then £130 actually could cover most of the core monthly shop....

Childcare was by some margin the biggest cost.

It’s absolutely disgusting.

If I were to be promoted, my salary would just reach that amount, and obviously my child benefit amount would be affected.

I’ve worked out that I would only receive a slight increase in the amount of money coming into my bank account as a result of the reduction in child benefit.

A promotion for me would involve giving up 1 of my weekend days, leaving work around 2 hours later each night, and increased work at home each evening and in the holidays. There’s absolutely no point, not for all that additional work and stress, and I would pretty much never see my children.

The systems unfair but then before they changed it people complained that it wasn't fair that everyone was entitled to it wether you were a billionaire or living entirely on benefits
Just a few weeks ago there was a thread about what people do with their child benefit so many people said they saved it for their children ,it could be argued that ic you can afford to save it you shouldn't really be getting it .

you are totally correct OP and it is unfair.

Correct. Yanbu.

As a single parent earning between 50 & 60k, I pay 40% paye, 12% NI and for every £ I earn, I lose 10p in child benefit, making my marginal tax return 62.5%

Richard Branson pays less, our prime minister pays less. It's hard to see it at anything other than political spite.

...tax rate... not return

Just a few weeks ago there was a thread about what people do with their child benefit so many people said they saved it for their children ,it could be argued that ic you can afford to save it you shouldn't really be getting it

But that depends why they can afford to save. Some people either have a more basic standard of living through choice or are more frugal and get a lot more out of their money than others.

Some people buy the most expensive version of everything, never bother to shop around, spend an awful lot of money on crap that they don't need but consider essential and claim to be skint/not be able to afford to save.

You could have two families with the same income and same basic needs and one with savings and the other in debt, solely due to different attitudes to money and what they do with it. You don't want a system that punishes good money management and prudence, which is what you're suggesting.