Child benefit

[Sunisshining12]

Just to check I am understanding this right, you put in the highest earners income only? Not your combined income?

No you put in combined income but the threshold is really high so most still qualify.

I'm reading it that you only input the highest earner?

We put both in from what i remember. If it says that than I guess you have your answer...

But it doesn't make sense to me because it says if one person earns over £50k you have to pay a 'tax charge'. In my circumstance, we would not actually receive any child benefit as we would have to repay it through the tax charge.

But then 2 individuals could earn say £49,999k each (total £100k) and still get full child benefit? Despite they earn double?

Surely that can't be right?

Think I'm going to have to call them tomorrow!

Yep that’s right. It’s ludicrous.

Yes its only one person income

It seems ludicrous but this is correct. A couple with a combined income of £50,001 are not eligible (at least not in full) and a couple with a combined income of £99,998 are.

What I do is claim it (or rather DH does as the non-earning partner) and then pay it back via self-assessment. Doing a tax return usually saves me some tax because you can declare Gift Aid payments etc, plus I maximise the cost to the government to claw the money back.

What the ??!! Why on earth is the system like that? We don't qualify for any then! But like you say the couple earning £100k combined do? Got to love the UK Gov!

@tribpot if you don't mind me asking how much do you actually come out with by using this method? Other than charity is there anything else that can be put through self assessment in relation to child benefit?

@

Also makes me laugh they refer to £50k as HIGH income. Yes it's not bad but it's certainly not HIGH. Especially not in London where loving is bloody high.

£100k combined is much higher!

Where did this lufacris method come from?

Sunisshining, it's not to do with child benefit per se, just that when you do a self-assessment tax return it asks you about certain tax deductible expenses that are otherwise invisible if you only PAYE. The only one that applies to me is charitable contributions (I think). So I end up saving a bit of tax and that offsets at least some of the child benefit repayments, thus I hope pissing off the government.

I can sort of understand how the system has ended up this way. It's too difficult to actually link partners together for tax purposes (although there's also the marriage allowance ) so it's based on a single income. Yes it creates an insane loophole but they must have calculated it was worth it to avoid a much more complicated assessment process. The fact that it is laughably unfair of course doesn't factor in.

Sorry to hijack but does anyone know if child benefit has stopped for third child, for a child born this year?

Gerry, the two child limit doesn't apply to Child Benefit. It only applies to Child Tax Credits and the equivalent under Universal Credit for children born after 6 April 2017.

From what I know, the only benefit that stops after the 2nd child is tax credits.

I appreciate it's hard to link people for tax purposes. Surely it should be like other benefits, don't they calculate off the HOUSEHOLD?

Have a threshold for joint income for any co-habiting parents for the child/ren in question? Regardless of their relationship status?

How silly! Clearly I'm sulking as we won't get any, yet my snooty in laws who earn £45k each are claiming!

It is madness, it was a David Cameron thing and it was supposed to support hardworking families (or something).

It's not true that you don't get anything if one parent earns £50,001 though, there's a sliding scale for earnings of £50,000-£60,000.

Also, it's worth claiming, even if you'll have to pay it all back, if one parent is not working, as it means the SAHP builds up state pension entitlement.

But tbh you aren’t going to get many couples earning just shy of £50k each. It is therefore much easier if they just do it on single income.

I think there are lots of families where the joint income will be between £50,000 and £100,000 with neither earning over £50,000 HeadDreamer. They are entitled to CB when other families with an income of £50,001 or more are not. It makes no sense.

DH earns £55k, I earn £11k. Child benefit is paid in full to me and he has to pay in some of it back in his tax return.

Yet if we both earned £49k we could keep it all.

Oh well! That's the tax system and there's nothing we can do about it!

If you earn over £50,000 you don't need to worry about child benefit! We get half of that and have been told we don't qualify for child tax credit when we bloody need it. I wouldn't be worried if we were on that kind of money

Do you mean child benefit or child tax credit? Rules differ.

OP meant benefit and I meant tax credits. The system is unfair yes on all front but it screws people in a lot worse financial state than OP

The system is extremely floored and I don't know how they can get away with it, it makes me sick to think people on combined income of £90,000 would get this benefit but st the same time I'd rather have that worry than be on 20 odd grand and not even get child tax credits...

It's above £50k taxable income. So you subtract pension and other salary sacrifice first. My salary is just over 50k but my taxable income is 44k. It's a good excuse to tell DW that I need to get a new bike every year as cycle to work scheme provides 1k salary sacrifice!

DoormatBob I don't think DH would go for that scheme considering it's about a 30 mile round trip!