Child benefit and salary increase

[AddictedtoCrunchies]

I'm not great with numbers and getting muddled with this. Can you help?

Currently on secondment in a role within my company and have applied for it permanently. Current salary is £48,700. If I get the role there's a possibility of a good pay rise, if not now, in March.

I am a single parent but have a very good relationship with ex. He pays me £221 a month. I also get child benefit. Questions are:

1. How much over £50k would I need to earn to offset the loss of the child benefit? Is it as simple as (child ben x13) plus tax?
2. I think I need to do a self assessment form once my salary goes up but, now I'm thinking about it I wonder if I should be doing one now for the maintenance I get. (I used to do one when I ran a small business but haven't for the last couple of years.) Because salary plus maintenance is more than £50k. Or is maintenance exempt?

The more I research, the more confused I'm getting. I do plan to speak to an accountant but thought I'd ask here as well.

Thank you.

There is some sort of taper I think so it's not just off a cliff at £50k.

For us we just stopped claiming it so no need to do a self assessment.

Check your pension contribution as it's £50k after pension before tax.

I do pay 12% into my pension each year. Great info thank you.

Yes it's tapered. So if you earn just over £50k you might only need to pay back about £150 or so.
Dh was contacted, asked to fill in a personal tax return, 'High Income Child Benefit Charge', so easy enough and we had to pay back only a small part of the £1k+ we received.

Maintenance for your child is not included.
As someone has previously pointed out, it’s based on taxable income, so you can deduct pension contributions.
Then child benefit is tapered away between £50-£60k of taxable income. If you fall between these thresholds, you should continue to claim child benefit but will need to do a tax return and pay a proportion of it back as additional tax. The tax return is not difficult but you do need to let HMRC know once you are over £50k taxable income for any tax year (April- March)

It's about 58k that it became not worth claiming it for us. Over 50k you'll start paying a little bit back, over 60k you'll pay it all back.

If you pay 12% of your salary into your pension, you'll still get some CB until over £60k, eg if you earn £65k, that's £57.2k after pension contributions, so you'll still get just over a quarter of your CB, assuming you don't have a company car or other benefits.

If you're not going to start earning the higher salary until next March, you probably won't even have to pay any back for this tax year, but will from next tax year, but I wouldn't worry about the tax return, it really is very easy, if all you have to do is repay some CB, it's probably a 10 minute job.

Just put your extra each month into your pension then I won't push you over the £50k to start faffing with tax returns

So I agree with points made

• you pay back money up to 60k earned AFTER pension and gift aidable charity donations are deducted
• it's still worth claiming up to 60k
• instead of paying back CB between 50k and 60k, you could instead pay into a SIPP. Then you could keep your CB, claim back tax of 20% via tax return, and build up a lovely bit of pension to take from 60 when you want to go part time and taper towards retirement. Win win win.