Child benefit - do I cancel it?

[LonelyLinda]

Could anybody advise me what to do please. My DH is over the tax threshold and I vaguely remember seeing something on here about pros and cons of keeping it or cancelling it, but I cant remember why.

could anybody explain it to me please? Sorry for being so vague.

Most advice I've seen is 'keep it'. You'll keep getting the money and, if you don't need it, just put it in a savings account. When your DH fills out a self-assessment form later on in the year he should declare that the CB has been received and it'll be recouped ... possibly via his tax-code... at some stage after that. You might as well take advantage of the interest in the meantime.

If he earns over £60k (taking pension contribs into account) he'll have to pay it all back. But if he earns between £50 and £60k there's a sliding scale.

My dh earns a good bit over the threshold but we've not cancelled.

It will be recouped from his tax.

In the interim we get the benefit of the interest and I'm not sure I trust the government when it comes to my home responsibilities payment so I'm keeping it just in case!

The interest you will get on your cash will amount to next to nothing - on £83 paid monthly for 3months at for instance 3% (which is a high rate today) you will earn about £2 on which you may have to pay tax deducted at source.

On the other hand, what you are costing the country is much more as this will incur extra mailing costs (paper, ink, envelopes, postage, people to organise mailing, printers to deliver the mailing to the post office...) not to mention people to administer the claim. to cross match with affairs with your partner, checking into fraudulent individuals who try to get around this by hiding their combined worth...the list goes on.
200,000 people opted out in the first week and this made the Treasury estimate it had already saved 50% of the estimated administration cost of the scheme.

So to save taxpayers funding purely administrative costs instead of hospitals and education, and to help pay down the deficit - which your own children are set to inherit if we don't do anything about this - then please consider opting out asap as it is the decent thing to do.
Peer pressure on those who want to pocket a couple of quid at society's expense would be welcome.

we opted out as dh earns well over the threshold but didnt want to have to do a self assessment tax return.

"then please consider opting out asap as it is the decent thing to do."

Decent ???!? A lot of PAYE taxpayers (myself included) find that, in the process of doing Self-Assessment, they are actually owed tax that they haven't previously claimed back. If you make private pension contributions, run a company car or make charitable donations you may find you are also due a rebate. HMRC love self-assessment because it saves them a lot of time and money.

Who are you Toto 110? George Osborne?? No, I will not opt out. Never in a million years will I make life easier for them. If they can't find a fair way to remove child benefit, i.e. letting families on joint incomes of up to 100k still be eligible for it then they deserve everything they get. Bring on the car crash!!!

Toto110 isn't making a George Osborne argument... quite the reverse. Conservatives are usually quite keen for taxpayers to retain as much of our hard-earned cash as possible. He's suggesting that taxpayers should just overlook money they are owed as a public-spirited gesture and that to claim back a tax rebate is some kind of selfish act i.e. 'pocketing a couple of quid at society's expense'. After my last self-assessment HMRC had to give me back £400 that I'd overpaid. It's a drop in the ocean compared to the tax I've actually paid but, more importantly, it's my money and why wouldn't I want that back?

Hi. I was a single parent from the time my son turned 3 months. I was also a student at the time, just starting on a two year course. My ex husband cleared me out in the divorce settlement as we went through it when he was jobless and just as my two year course ended and I managed to get a job ( I didn't want) that paid a good salary. My lawyer advised a clean break and pay-off as, unlike when a divorced woman remarries and becomes the responsibility of her new husband (so alimony stops) a woman's ex husband may remarry and neither of them work so I would have had to continue to pay, and for both of them. Life is tough, but being a parent is a big responsibility and when I look at the partner offers on this website I hardly feel there are that many mothers that badly off. The ones above say they partners earn more than £50K for instance. When I started on my own I couldn't afford clothes so I got hand me downs from other parents for my son and I stopped the gas and boiled kettles with electricity to fill a baby bath tub for my son - I went to school early to use the gymn showers. I appreciate poor is relative but even then I did not feel I was deserving of benefits and never sought to get them. Childbenefit was foisted on me. I believe being a person who is responsible enough to raise a child means you have to be responsible financially and full in charge of covering your child's costs. Otherwise why have them if you are3 looking to other tax payers to pay for them?
If more thought the same then the benefits bill would be dramatically reduced and really only the very needy would be recipients. There would be more for them too and more support instead of spreading the help so thin it makes little or no difference to most.
My father raised me to be an adult at 18 with nobody owing me anything. I have lived that way and saved every month I have earned so that rainy days are manageable.
Sorry to preach but to take money from others (taxpayers) that you can never say thank you to, show your gratitude to or pay back seems the wrong way for a society to hold together.

We all pay thousands into the tax system over the course of our working lives and the idea is that we get the benefit of it back in the form of public services, a harmonious society and occasionally financial help when we need it.

So in your spirit of 'doing the decent thing' and never accepting any help will you be opting out of the education system? Saying 'no thanks' to healthcare? Do what you like but don't tell me I'm some kind of irresponsible drain on resources just because I choose to claim back a bit of tax...

I have always paid my child's private care whether child minders, au pairs, nannies, nursery school and school. I had no family living near me so every hour I spent away from my child at work or elsewhere cost me £10 in cover. I believe education is highly important so it is the best gift you can give your child and far more important than my having a car, than having 5 channels on my tv (we didn't until 2008), holidays (museums are free entry so that was our holidays). My company had me registered for private healthcare. So no I have not been a drain on other people in the UK. In return for my tax I get roads, street lighting, policing, rubbish collection, pest control, firemen, ambulances etc - basically everything I cannot provide efficiently myself.

I've never heard such a load of pious crap in my life.

I admit I must sound pious however imagine living in a country where everyone is popping out kids without budgetting the full cost and then ewxpecting pious, hard working people like me to pay without even a thank you! I think I have it harder

My husband pays nearly 20k a year in tax NI. I would have been happier to lose my child benefit if it was being removed from ALL families over a certain HOUSEHOLD income. The fact is, this is not the case and I am very cross. Why should my need for something be less than a family on nearly twice our income? For what it's worth, I was brought up in a poor family with very little money to go round. As a result of my upbringing, I am still very prudent now and always buy cheap / second hand where I can. I am definitely not 'entitled' and do not expect the 'tax payer' to pay for my children. My husband and I pay for our own children. I do, however, expect the government responsible for the running of the country to be able to implement FAIR policies.

"I think I have it harder "

Because no-one comes knocking on your door to say thanks? Gee, life must be one big disappointment to you....

well I was brought up to believe that saying thanks makes all the difference and I avoid situations where I can't, that's all. I agree with 'ihategeorgeosbornes' comment that the removal of the benefit over a threshhold is unfair, just like the child trust funds that were introduced in 2000 and we missed by one year (my son being a 1999 baby).
What I find more worrying is that the Institute for Fiscal Studies says 7 million out of 14.1m working families will se a reduction in their benefits with the proposed freeze on increases to 1% (less than inflation).
How on earth can half the working families in Britain be on benefits? How did we get in this situation. It is not financially viable.
It is just an idea, and not really thought through, but perhaps the Govt could do away with all benefits and then focus the help on the poorest 5 or 10%, including those with debilitating conditions and vulnerable elderly etc. I would really like to see much more help channelled to these people.

Whether to keep claiming CB when one partner earns more than £50k has very little to do with benefits any more. It's a taxable income issue. So the advice stands for anyone in the £50k-£60k bracket... keep claiming, file a self-assessment and, if necessary, pay some or all of it back. With the added bonus that they might get a tax rebate at the same time.

I agree, benefits should only be for those that really need them. People in work should be paying less tax and being allowed to keep more of their own money. Employers should pay a living wage too. The situation we are in is totally unsustainable, but NO government dares do this as they know it is electoral oblivion. They missed an opportunity with the child benefit changes. They could easily have made the cuts fairer by merging into tax credits. Instead they went for the more complex, very unfair, but doesn't affect many people (so our voting base should hold up) option. I guarantee they will regret this when it becomes clear that clawing back the money is not as straight forward as they'd hoped and also when they lose the election in 2015 it should sink in slowly that it may have been a mistake. Who knows?

I cancelled my CB - both I and DH are over the threshold so no point receiving and then paying back. It saves admin for both HMRC, but more importantly for me too.

If you earn over £60k I would stop it, if you earn less I wouldn't.

Yes, part of the problem is the working tax credits. All this has done is to enable employers to keep their wage bills artificially low. Employers should pay living wages and working tax credits be done away with.

I asked this question a while ago and all the advice was not to cancel. Ignoring any moral debate on keeping the interest (which personally I think is fine since it is a perfectly legal course of action) the reasons were generally:

• if your circumstances change such that you re-qualify, it is likely to be a pretty earth shattering event, like your DH losing his job, dying, or leaving. At a time where that money could be a lifeline, it would be good not to spend time waiting for your request to be processed;

• lack of faith that the home responsibilities bit (or whatever it is called) will be properly administered if you are not earning yourself;

• the fact that, as a person who has only ever done PAYE, my DH may well be owed a fair bit of money by the tax man, which doing a return will flush out. a poster who was an accountant reckons it is very rare for people not to find out that they are owed money well into three figures.

Oh, also bear in mind that, as I understand it, you have missed the deadline to stop it so will have to do a return this year anyway (think I have that right).

I like the sound of the tax rebate Amanda. We are in similar situation. DH is PAYE and will have to self assess for this. I don't understand though why he would get a tax rebate, as why would he not be paying the right amount of tax now? Also, (god forbid) what if it turns out that he owes them money?

Unlikely he owes them money unless he has income from a source other than work I should have thought (though am no expert).

My thread was here. Things like gift aid sponsorship could add up quite fast - the charity claims back the basic rate tax and you can claim back the next chunk to take it to higher rate (assuming your charitable giving doesn't exceed the amount of higher rate earnings you have).

TOTO Child Trust Funds were introduced in March 2003 and backdated to September 2002 as ds was the only baby out of the 6 babies born that year in dh's family to get one. My dd was born in January 2000 and didn't get a trust fund as they weren't introduced until then.

Thanks Amanda. There is no other income apart from work. He just has a straight forward P60 at the end of the tax year. He doesn't receive a P11D, so no benefits in kind to declare. Savings are in my name as I am SAHM with unused tax allowance. I would imagine we are pretty straight forward, though cannot see how he will get a tax rebate. He does a pay a bit to the NSPCC which he has never claimed relief for being on PAYE. May need to check this out. Perhaps we should pay the £100 or so and see an accountant. It's just difficult knowing who to speak to. It's a bit like doctors and mechanics - some are good and some are not so good. Does anyone know if you can back claim for charitable donations?