Restarting child benefit - bit confused....

[Chathamhouserules]

I realised that I should have restarted childbenefit as my husband's income went down from 63k to 53k in 2016 (I earn under this). Has anyone else done this? I've started the online form. It asks 'when do you want to restart your claim' and says "The time limit to pay Child Benefit for an earlier period from the date of your request is the current tax year and the previous two tax years. For example 20/03/2016" But this has confused me! I think DH changed jobs in Aug 2016. So could anyone advise what the earliest date I can restart my claim? Thanks!!

So we're in 18/19 tax year just now so the 2 previous ones would be 17/18 And 16/17. Maybe just put his start date with the new job. They should then calculate what CB you would be due

Thank you! Would you know how long they back pay? I thought 3 months. I assumed the longer period they put on there was for the national insurance contributions thing (I read about in the paper the other day).

The 3 months backdating is for first applications not for restarting payments. From what they have written it looks like you can claim back to 2016

Oooooh! Fingers crossed. It might be £££. At tax payers expense I guess in this age of austerity. But then we have paid fair amount of tax over the years so I'll try not to feel too guilty. Thanks for your advice!

I did this just before Christmas OP. DH moved to a job with a lot less overtime & as such his income fell below the high earners threshold (we'd previously opted out of receiving CB) I kept meaning to restart CB but kept putting off thinking it would be a headache. I restarted it & claimed the previous full year & the current year to date & received over £2k. All I will say is they can only make a payment of upto £1k per day so don't panic when you see the first one if you expect it to be more, I got 3 payments on the 3 consecutive days to make up the total.

I've never claimed it as DH earns over £60k but someone said to me that you should still claim and then just repay it each year. Because it puts the child in the national insurance system. What do you think?

Sorry to derail your thread OP! Trying to decide whether it's worth the admin!

You can claim it but opt out of payment and that protects the NI credits and means the child gets their NI number automatically when they turn 16

mum I think it's only worth doing if one of the parents (or possibly grandparents providing childcare) doesn't get NI credits from working.

But you don't need to get the payment and then pay it back. Claim and opt out of payment instead.

Ok thanks all. I'll have a proper look into claiming but opting out of payment