As of January this year, households where either parent earns £60,000 or more have had to give back any child benefit that has been paid to them. If the higher earner has income of between £50,000 and £60,000 then some of it has to be returned. You can, if you like, choose to just stop receiving the child benefit in the first place, and many people have done just that.
However, there might sometimes be an argument for continuing to claim the payments, before eventually giving them back.
You
might prefer to have the money sitting in your account rather than
HMRC’s. It’s probably not worthwhile to have a couple of thousand
pounds temporarily in your bank account if you’re earning a minimal
interest rate on a savings account. But if you have an offset mortgage,
it might be worthwhile – having the money set against your debt,
reducing the interest charged, could easily be worth £100 a year.
Also, if your circumstances change – you lose your job, or take a
sabbatical – there’s always a chance you’ll forget to start claiming
child benefit again. So you might want to just claim throughout on
those grounds.
So whilst some people may prefer to just not receive the payments in the first place, there may well be a rational case for many to carry on claiming, with the expectation of returning the money to HMRC down the line.
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