Child benefit

[Sunisshining12]

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

@Bella how do you know I don't need to worry about CB? My OH earns just over £50k GROSS. He's worked his way up from the bottom where he earned minimum wage. He works 90-100 hours per week.

I'm a non earner with a toddler & a new born, I don't get maternity or any other benefits. My OH spends a lot on commuting, our living costs are high due to being in the South, we don't have holidays luxurys or expensive things. May sound like a lot to you but in reality it's not. We are not millionaires. So actually CB does matter to me it would help towards nappies & all the hidden extras. My OH loses a lot of his salary in tax, I also paid thousands of tax when in full time employment before having my first. When I return to work the government will take from me again & yet I don't get any help whatsoever.

You saying I don't need to worry about it isn't your call. I'm assuming you get the benefit along with other tax credits that top you up.

If his net pay, taking into account pension contributions etc, is less than 50k you are entitled to cb in full.

You don’t need to claim it and pay it back via self assessment to get the pension credit. You just need to fill in the form and tick the box saying you do not actually wish to receive the payment.

OP we are in the same position as you. It's incredibly unfair. Everyone we know earns more than us and gets cb, we aren't allowed it!

Irregardless of your judgement, my question was am I understanding it right. The answer is clearly yes. The system baffles me, almost every couple I know earn £50k-£100k joint. And will therefore be claiming.

One earner family earning say £55k gets zilch. I remember women at work who refused to work more than 16 or 24 hours per week as they would lose their benefit. It's shocking!

You don't get nothing for earning 55k. It is reduced on a sliding scale starting above 50k. But even those earning above 50k -60k gross may be eligible if they make pension contributions, charity donations and so on which lower it. Agree with pp that you can register and not receive payment and get the credit for ni purposes.

@Liz thanks I've used the eligibility calculator, we would have to repay the full amount. So to me there is no point in claiming to relpay it all back. I will tick the box to say don't pay. It asks for overtime bonuses etc too. My OH pays for everything at the moment seens as I wasn't entitled to any maternity. We have always shared money but also had our own too of that makes sense? Things will be better when I return to work!

You don’t need to claim it and pay it back via self assessment to get the pension credit.

Yes - sorry, hope my post didn't imply that you did. Doing the self-assessment is just my way of pissing off the government. I appreciate that they might have slightly bigger fish to fry but it pleases me anyway. I also think as a point of principle the lower earner should claim it and then higher earner pay it back. Any number of SAHP may have found a small revenue stream that they were entitled to cut off by a partner who doesn't want to do the self-assessment.

You should claim even if you don't actually get the money because it protects your NI record for the time you are a SAHP of a child under 12.

You don't lose all CB until the high earner has a gross income after pensions and any other eligible deductions of £60k+, so if your DH earns just above £50k and pays into a pension, or makes charitable contributions (I don't know what else counts but the info will be on the gov.uk website) you will get something.

The disparity between the single earner/double earners is unfair, but that's the system and it has been for a few years now.

It is likely however, that if you have two earners on £40/50k they will be paying out a lot in childcare and possibly commuting, costs which you don't have, so they may not be that better off anyway.

I think it was a different poster tribpot.

I admire your efforts in pissing off the gov! I hate self assessment.

Sunisshining12 I'm in exactly your situation and we earn half of that money and no we don't get tax credits as apparently not entitled to them. the system is a joke. We have a dead high mortgage and everything else and the child benefit we do get doesn't put us on anywhere near 50k. Hence why if we had that kind of money we could make it work

Yes but Bella wheb I return to work in 6 months I will have commuting & 2 x childcare costs to pay. I earn £21k. So much so that after paying pension, childcare and the train fees I will have basically nothing. But I have to return so when my kids start school I will be earning properly. And so that I don't lose touch with my job. Plus I don't want to live off my OH wage it just about covers everything now.

So once again it's irrelevant what my OH earns to me to some extent. Because colleagues around me will be on joint £50-£100k plus & get the CB.

Doesn't seem to help SAHP.

Same as the maternity, I don't receive any because I stayed home & was pregnant quite soon with my second (22 months between) I don't get any maternity. I literally have no income despite you thinking I'm a millionaire.

Bella it seems that the system doesn't recognise SAHP. or people that pay shit loads of tax into the system & don't even get a tiny bit back. I'm not pleading poverty of course I'm not on the breadline. But that wasn't my question. And it really pisses me off when people jump on MN saying £50k is loads I earn way less you're loaded etc etc. FYI it's £2800 take home after pension. For a family of 4 in the South where your mortgage is £1500, commuting is expensive & all the usual bills expenses etc it really isn't living the dream!

Thanks to those that answered I had my 3rd 6 months ago and didn't apply for cb because I thought you didn't get it for third!! I will send off today and see what happens, probably lost money now as well and could really do with it!

I think I would have more of an issue that your DH works 90-100 hours a week. Why so many hours? What sort of life is that?

And if your family doesn't get any CB at all, your DH must be on quite a bit more than 'just over £50k' because you don't lose it all until £60k and does he have pension contributions that would increase the salary he lost it at even higher?

You'd expect pension contributions on that sort of salary to be a few £k a year, so in reality there will be people on £65k still getting some CB.

Plenty of people pay 'shit loads of tax' and don't get CB. But it pays for much more than that like roads, hospitals, police etc etc etc.

"plus I maximise the cost to the government to claw the money back."
Why would you want the government to have less money for schools, the NHS etc.
Self assessment is fine, your second reason for doing so is selfish and immature.

The child benefit laws are bizarre. By all means bar high earners from claiming it but it isn't fair a 2 earning parent household on £99,999 can claim when a 1 earning parent household on £60,000 cannot, especially when the 2 earners household will be paying less tax as they have 2 personal allowances to make use of etc. They totally messed up this as far as I'm concerned.

There's been lots of bizarre finance laws though. Stamp duty before they made the changes was a case in point.

Up to £125k, no stamp duty payable.
£125k - stamp duty of £1250 payable and then 1% of total amount up to £250k so nearly £2500 on a house just under threshold when it then jumped up to 3% on the total amount so £7500 on a house just over £250k. Caused a lot of distortion in the market around these price points.

I wonder if, for CB, they should have abolished it altogether and then included it in the tax credit system so it was assessed on a family income and families on lower incomes continued to receive the full amount and then it tapered off like tax credits do, so it is gradually withdrawn as family income increases.

@barbara yes it is a shit lifestyle. But that's how the world is. I don't know many people who are earning over £50k who don't work hellish hours. If you do then please tell me what that job is! My OH is responsible for a lot of people & is always working. He leaves the house at 5.30am and arrives home late in the evening. Obviously some of that is commuting, often delays etc. Not that that is any of your business?

@blahblah I agree. Why don't the gov abolish CB for households over say £60k? That way it covers up the loop hole of those on £100k still claiming. My issue isn't that I don't get it per se, its that my household earns less than others and yet they still get it. None of us should get it. And that way there would be more money in the pot too.

Sunisshining12 I have all of the same expenses and have no maternity pay either and my wage will not cover travelling or child care so id be left with nothing. We're stuck with DH's wage which is under 30,000 and he works all the hours imaginable and we pay shit loads of taxes too and it's expensive where we live also. We have been told we're not entitled to child tax credit as and the benefit is hardly anything so really wouldn't help your situation that much. I'd rather DH got the 50,000 than under 30 including the small amount of child
Benefit.

DH is out house from 6am to 7am every day and doesn't get the salary to match what he has to do and no opportunities to progress within the payscale thanks to the torie government. There's very few opportunities to progress because of the job market at the moment and his job is very unstable at the moment. The system is shite and people like us who own our house and paid taxes and worked all our lives get nothing. we're scrimping and saving just to buy food and shops at Aldi and lidle as it is i don't know how many more cuts I can make. No opportunities to work from home so I'm looking at if I can do something to make money like selling or some sort of websites there must be something!

7pm

The government screws us all. Sooner conservatives out the better... to be fair the child benefit system has never been a fair system and it's been like that for years...

If your DH earns just over 50k gross, then you would qualify for some child benefit. It tapers down so over 60k taxable pay you don’t get any. If he pays into a pension scheme at all, then that would reduce his taxable pay, meaning you might actually be entitled to full CB. If those figures you gave are correct, I think it’s worth doing your calculations again.

Bella remember my OH is in the 40% tax bracket too so even more deductions. I just wanted to understand the reasoning behind the system: clearly there is no reasoning. 2 people can earn £100k & get it, 1 person home earning £55k or whatever the actual figure is can't. No body should get it in these categories.

If your OH takes home £1900-£2k & your mortgage is £1500, and you don't earn then im not surprised you are struggling.