The High Income Child Benefit Charge
It is assessed on one person's income, not your household's. Two parents earning £60,000 each — £120,000 between them — keep every penny of their Child Benefit. One parent earning £80,000 with a partner at home keeps none of it. The second household is £40,000 a year worse off and pays a charge the first has never heard of.
The rule, in one sentence
If the higher earner in the household has an adjusted net income above £60,000, they must pay back 1% of the Child Benefit for every £200 they are over. At £80,000 the repayment reaches 100% and the benefit is worth nothing to the household at all. Nobody else's income is looked at, and it makes no difference that the money was paid to the other parent.
That is a threshold applied to an individual to means-test a household payment, and it is why the answer to “can we afford another day of work” depends less on what your family earns than on which of you earns it.
Same household income, opposite outcome
Three households, all claiming for 2 children, all worked through this site's engine on 2026-27 rates. The middle and bottom rows earn exactly the same.
| Household | Household income | Higher earner | Charge | Child Benefit kept |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Two earners on £60,000 eachNeither is over the threshold, so nobody is charged. | £120,000 | £60,000 | £0 | £2,337.40 |
| Two earners on £40,000 eachSame household income as the row below. Nobody is charged. | £80,000 | £40,000 | £0 | £2,337.40 |
| One earner on £80,000, one at homeOne income over the upper limit. The whole benefit is charged back. | £80,000 | £80,000 | £2,337.40 | £0 |
The top household earns £40,000 a year more than the bottom one and is charged nothing. The middle and bottom households earn the identical £80,000 and end the year £10,019.20 apart once tax, National Insurance and the charge are all counted — £2,337.40 of that gap is the charge alone, and the rest is what two personal allowances and two basic-rate bands are worth against one.
This is not a drafting accident. The charge is administered through one person's tax return, and HMRC holds no record of who lives with whom — assessing it on household income would need a means test the income tax system has never had.
There are two cliffs on that chart, not one, and the family cliff arrives £40,000 earlier than the famous one. With 4 children it is also the taller of the two: 63.00% against the 62% of the personal allowance taper.
Your child benefit charge
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What it does to your next £1
The only difference between these two figures is the Child Benefit claim. The salary, the pension and the region are held identical, so the gap between them is the charge and nothing else.
- Marginal rate with your children
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- The same salary, no claim
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- Added by the charge
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Clearing it with a pension contribution
A pension contribution reduces adjusted net income pound for pound, and adjusted net income is what the charge is worked out on. Put enough in to bring it back to the threshold and the charge goes to zero — and unlike the charge, the money is still yours.
How this was calculated
Why the marginal rate is the number that matters
The charge is usually described as a repayment, which makes it sound like a bill arriving after the fact. On the pound you are deciding whether to earn, it is a tax rate — and a steep one, because it is levied over a fixed £20,000 span however large the benefit being clawed back is. A bigger family does not get a longer runway. It gets a steeper slope.
Each row below is two runs of the engine on the same £70,000 salary, differing only in the number of children.
| Children | Child Benefit a year | Added by the charge | Marginal rate | In Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | £1,406.60 | 7.03p | 49.03% | 51.03% |
| 2 | £2,337.40 | 11.69p | 53.69% | 55.69% |
| 3 | £3,268.20 | 16.34p | 58.34% | 60.34% |
| 4 | £4,199 | 21.00p | 63.00% | 65.00% |
At £70,000 the underlying rate is 42% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and 44% in Scotland; everything above that is the charge. Scotland has a further step inside the band, because its advanced rate begins between the two limits.
Add a student loan and it stops being funny. Someone on £70,000 with three children, a Plan 2 loan and a postgraduate loan keeps 26.66p of their next pound — a higher marginal rate than anyone in this country pays on their millionth. Work yours out on the student loan calculator.
What “adjusted net income” actually counts
Not your salary, and not the taxable pay on your P60 either. Adjusted net income is your total taxable income from every source — salary, bonus, taxable benefits in kind such as a company car or medical insurance, rental profit, savings interest above the allowances, dividends — less the reliefs that are allowed to be deducted from it. Chief among those are pension contributions and Gift Aid donations, both counted gross.
Two consequences people miss. A benefit in kind can push you over the threshold without a penny extra reaching your bank account — worth knowing before taking medical cover in place of a pay rise. And Gift Aid works here exactly like a pension contribution, so donations you have already made are worth totalling up — the calculator above has a box for the total, and it moves the charge the same way a contribution does.
The contribution that clears it, and what it really costs
The arithmetic is unusually clean: bring your adjusted net income down to £60,000 and the charge is gone. The calculator above works that figure out for your salary. The interesting part is what the contribution costs you, because it is never what you put in.
Take someone on £110,000 with 2 children. They are losing the whole £2,337.40 of Child Benefit, and their Personal Allowance has already fallen to £7,570 because they are inside the taper as well. Clearing the charge takes a £50,000 salary sacrifice, and its slices are not worth the same.
| Slice of the contribution | Amount | Cost to take-home | Effective relief |
|---|---|---|---|
| £110,000 down to £100,000 | £10,000 | £3,800 | 62.00% |
| £100,000 down to £80,000 | £20,000 | £11,600 | 42.00% |
| £80,000 down to £60,000 | £20,000 | £9,262.60 | 53.69% |
| The whole contribution | £50,000 | £24,662.60 | 50.67% |
£50,000 into the pension for £24,662.60 out of the pocket. More than half comes back, and two traps are cleared at once: the Personal Allowance returns to £12,570 and the charge falls to £0.
The last column is the one that repays study. Relief here is not uniform and not even monotonic — the first slice is worth 62% because it escapes the allowance taper, the last is worth 53.69% because it escapes the charge, and the slice between them is worth only 42% because that stretch of income is caught by neither. A contribution that stops halfway down buys the worst pounds in the range, so the arithmetic strongly favours going the whole way.
Two limits. It has to be real money going into a pension you cannot touch for decades, and it counts against your annual allowance — the calculator warns you when the amount needed exceeds it. Where an employer offers salary sacrifice it beats the other two methods, because it saves National Insurance too at no cost to the pot: see the salary sacrifice guide and the pension tax relief calculator.
Claim it anyway
The obvious response to a charge that takes back everything you were paid is to stop claiming. That is usually the wrong move, and it is the mistake with the longest tail.
A claim carries National Insurance credits for the parent who claims it, for as long as there is a child under twelve in the household. Those credits build qualifying years towards the state pension for a parent out of work or working part time — very often the same parent whose absent income created the charge. A claim also gets the child a National Insurance number.
So make the claim and tick the box asking not to be paid. The credits continue, no money moves, and there is no charge because there is no benefit to claw back. If your income later falls back below the threshold you restart the payments. Households that never claimed have had to backdate instead, and backdating is limited.
How it is collected, and what to check
The charge never appears on a payslip. It is assessed on the higher earner through Self Assessment, so a household where nobody has ever filed a tax return acquires an obligation to register for one purely because of a pay rise. Penalties for failing to notify have caught a great many people who did not know the charge existed, let alone that it was theirs.
Three things worth checking. Whether it is genuinely you who owes it, since the liability follows whichever partner has the higher adjusted net income and that can swap between years. Whether a new partner moving in has created a charge where there was none, because the test looks at the couple as it stands rather than at who the child's parents are. And whether your adjusted net income is what you think it is, once benefits in kind, savings interest and any pension or Gift Aid deductions are in the same sum.
For income tax, National Insurance, the pension methods and this charge in one place, use the take-home pay calculator.
The £60,000 threshold, the £80,000 upper limit and the weekly Child Benefit rates are the published 2026-27 figures, last verified 2026-08-08 and each traced to the gov.uk page it was read from on the methodology page. This is an information tool, not financial advice.
What this does not do
- Decide which of you pays it. The charge falls on whichever partner has the higher adjusted net income, and this page assumes the figures above are that person's. If you are the lower earner, the answer here is not your bill.
- Know whether you live together. The charge only applies to a couple living as partners for part of the year, and separating mid-year changes who is liable and for how much — a question about your circumstances rather than your income.
- Handle a claim that started or stopped part-way through the year. Both the benefit and the charge are pro-rated, and this page prices a full year.
- Model employer pension contributions or anything payrolled rather than reported. If your employer puts a benefit through payroll, it is already inside your pay and should not be entered again above.
Child benefit charge questions
- Should I stop claiming child benefit if I have to pay it back?
- Usually no. Claim it and register for the charge rather than not claiming: the claim itself carries National Insurance credits towards the State Pension for the parent at home, and it registers the child for a National Insurance number. If you would rather not handle the money, claim and elect not to receive payments — that keeps the credits without creating a charge.
- Which parent pays the charge?
- Whichever partner has the higher adjusted net income, whether or not they are the one claiming. It is assessed on one person, not on household income, which is why a couple earning £55,000 each pay nothing while a single earner on twice the threshold pays the lot.
- How do I avoid the high income child benefit charge?
- By bringing adjusted net income below the threshold, which a pension contribution or salary sacrifice does. The calculator above works out the contribution that clears it. Above the upper limit the charge equals the whole benefit, so there is nothing left to protect and the only reason to keep claiming is the credits.
- Do I have to fill in a tax return for it?
- You have to tell HMRC, and for most people that has meant Self Assessment. The charge is collected through the return or, increasingly, through your tax code. Either way the obligation is on the higher earner to register — it is not deducted automatically, and the penalty for not registering is a separate problem from the charge itself.