A major change to Child Benefit for higher income families is set to come into force from this summer. Child Benefit is a payment that is awarded to anyone who is responsible for looking after a child.
It is worth £26.05 a week for your first child, then £17.25 for any additional child. There is no limit for how many children you can claim Child Benefit for, but if two people look after a child, only one person can claim Child Benefit.
If you, or your partner, are on a high income, then you may have to pay back some of your Child Benefit. If either you earn over £60,000, you have to pay back 1% of your Child Benefit for every £200 you earn over £60,000.
This is known as the High Income Child Benefit Charge. Once you earn over £80,000, you pay back 100% of your Child Benefit. The High Income Child Benefit Charge is normally paid each year by completing a self-assessment tax return.
However, families will soon have the option to pay it through their PAYE tax code. A new digital service is expected to be available from summer 2025. HMRC will contact families when the new system goes live. You will still be able to pay the High Income Child Benefit Charge through self-assessment if you want to.
You can make a claim for Child Benefit without getting the payments, in order to get National Insurance credits which count toward your state pension, if you don’t want to pay the charge. The threshold for the High Income Child Benefit charge was increased from £50,000 to £60,000 in April 2024.
The number of penalties issued to families caught out by the High Income Child Benefit Charge has plummeted by 99%, according to new data obtained by Quilter. In the 2023/24 tax year, just 75 penalties for Failure to Notify (FTN) were issued, down from 7,007 the year before.
The total value of penalties charged fell from £4.5million to just £45,443. Only 46 penalties have been issued so far in 2024/25, confirming the collapse is not a one-off.
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Child Benefit is claimed by more than seven million families. You can claim Child Benefit if you’re responsible for a child under the age of 16, or if they are under the age of 20 and still in approved education or training.
This can include A-Levels, NVQs or even home education, but it does not include university or BTEC qualifications. The child normally has to live with you, or you pay at least the same amount as Child Benefit toward looking after them, in order for you to claim the payments.
You can claim Child Benefit if you fostered a child, as long as the local council is not paying anything towards their accommodation or maintenance, if you adopted your child. You may also be entitled if you’re looking after a child for a friend or relative. Child Benefit is paid every four weeks by HMRC on a Monday or Tuesday.
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