To be pissed off about paying back child benefit

[pinotnow]

I am in a sector that was awarded a pay rise this year - though our union is fighting for a higher one. The rise was from September but our school (yes, it's teaching) didn't pay it until November when we got months at once. HR always send us a pay statement at this time of year and I have just opened mine and seen I am now on approx £52k (been teaching 18 years and am head of a core subject in a large secondary school). I understand I now have to pay back some of my child benefit. This is a pisser as things are pretty tight and I'm a lone parent who gets no CM (ex is a total waste of space - I've gone through CMS). Also, I wasn't expecting it this year (I was on £49k last year and now I'm worried I've missed some sort of deadline for paying it back as technically I've been on this for 5-6 months, but only just realised.

I really haven't got the head space for this now and a quick Google has just brought confusion. As soon as you move forwards a bit in this shithole country you move backwards it seems. Any advice would be great!

Why are you struggling to pay mortgage and bills when your partner is on over 50k?

doesn’t he contribute?

With 50k you’re not rich. If they’ve got a big mortgage and few bills for the daughter the 50k will be reduced to nothing

This income is in the top 22% in the country

I’m really not. I live in the south and we can barely make it to end of the month with rent and childcare.

It’s a terrible system! However as mentioned once and twice by others , you can deal with the overpayment at the end of current tax year and ask for it to be paid back via your tax code in the next tax year ie they give you a lower tax allowance and the overpayment is paid back that way on the drip, it may even be offset by your pay rise so no lump sum to find and just another adjustment to your monthly net pay, HMRC will send your new tax code to your employer.

I would phone HMRC and notify them now, get it fixed for going into the new tax year, given it’s only just been paid to you, you are only now fully aware of the position and are keen to sort it out.

good luck.

The calculation is done on your top line after pension is removed. If you pay 5% into a pension then this takes you below the threshold. Eg £2600 is 5%. So that takes you down to £49,400. You get all your child benefit.

Why do you think working parents aren't raising their children? You really think that your husband wasn't raising yours? Have you told him?

Being a parent involves the dual responsibilities of child care and financial support. Working to pay for the food your child eats, the shelter they live in, the clothes on their back..... that's all raising a child. I'm not being punished because I work to provide the food the child I chose to have needs.

Also discriminates where one parent is a high earner and one a low earner, Dh is a locum and rarely gets above 20k pa while we are fortunate to have 2 incomes, can't see why we have to repay CB when others earn more jointly.

Tagging on question for myself. Is there anything else other than pensions contributions you can deduct?

Have you tried the calculator? www.gov.uk/child-benefit-tax-calculator

ignore the vile comments , it’s easy when like her you are on the threshold

I work too and plan to for at least 40+ years of my life. Other than the first few years of my kids lives, ive never been out of work. My Husband loved that I stayed at home (ofcourse had to accept a massive income hit for this but worth it). My point was shouldn’t the government be at least giving parents (and usually it is the Mum who wants to stay at home abit more in the first few years but ofcourse some Dads do aswell) the chance to spend more time with their kids whilst they are young? Why take child benefit away from a family where a parent stays at home in the early years, yet give it to a household earning nearly £100k for 18 years of their kids lives. Thats what everyone should be questioning!

As ive said before, just basing it on total household income would make it a much fairer system. You can see from this thread, people are having to find ways to reduce their income to keep getting it. The whole thing is so messed up!

You can put the excess into a pension and still get CB.

It might be working the system, but as long as it's legal, it's not technically a scam.

Also some women (and men!) stay at home to look after their children because they couldn't earn enough to pay for the childcare. Especially if they've got a few children. Basically, the government doesn't want people to have more than one or two children or stay out of work too long (not paying taxes), so they've come up with a system to make that kind of family life impossible for most.

Agree! That was our situation before pre-school/school, it would have been pointless working to bring home a few quid.

Im not even asking for CB for us - just asking for a fair system. People with a much higher household income than us (say by 30k) get given it, whilst we dont. Bonkers!

Where you are in the country also makes a difference. When I was living in London my health visitor told me that the mothers she worked with who were on child number two under school age couldn't go back to work because of the childcare costs. It was around the time when Cherie Blair made that shockingly out-of-touch comment about 'yummy mummys'. I think she lived in a different part of London from me because I didn't know any 'yummy mummys', just hard-working mums.

@pinotnow

why should any country pay you for having kids?
yes the rules on it are stupid I agree.

have you stood for election?
have you wrote to you MP?
why not if you are so upset about it?
do you vote at every election?

How annoying for you! If you want to talk it through with someone then Citizens Advice can offer guidance on this kind of thing. HMRC will tell you processes, but they don't advocate for you as they have to be impartial/unbiased

Might be worth chatting it through with a specialist advisor as there must be some options to work this out

Don’t forget you can make additional payments to your pension (faster accrual or purchase additional pension) to get it under 50k

I may be missing something but it sounds as if your DH should claim Child benefit surely?

Totally agree that its unfairly done - and I say that as someone on the other side of it.

My advice would be to up your pension contributions as much as possible to lower your taxable income. We've done this with several pay rises to avoid triggering things over certain income thresholds. It's annoying as all your extra is for future benefit and doesn't help in the here and now. And it only works up to a certain amount but as someone just on the threshold it could help.

He does, apart from the money, he gets the Ni credit which is useful but then I will have to payit back in the tax as my earnings will tipover 50k this year.
That's main point of the thread; if one of you, or a single parent earns over 50k you have to pay it back, if 2 parents earn up to 49k each, they don't .

I don’t disagree the system isn’t very fair but I’d be interested to know how many families there are where both partners earn £40k to £50k as I don’t know anyone in this situation.

Thinking of all the families I know with kids, it’s either both partners earning low wages, one partner (generally the man) earning more than £50k and the other partner working very little/not at all. Or in a few cases, both partners earning a lot more than £50k.

I just never see this set up everyone talks about where a family earning £99k can claim child benefit.

Between £50-£60k you’ll only pay a percentage every year of the £2k you’re over, it won’t be a case of not being completely unenrolled, you’ll just have to complete a tax return. But as people say they’ll take into account works pension payments so you’ll prob have nothing to pay.

My point was shouldn’t the government be at least giving parents (and usually it is the Mum who wants to stay at home abit more in the first few years but ofcourse some Dads do aswell) the chance to spend more time with their kids whilst they are young?

No - it's not the government's job to sort out the financial planning of every set of young parents in the country. It absolutely should be tackling high housing/childcare costs, but not giving people money to stay at home for years because they fancy being a SAHP.