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6th January, 2013

Opting Out of Child Benefit

Opting Out of Child Benefit
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If the changes to Child benefit are going to affect your household, you may join the 165,000 who are currently opting out of child benefit.

There are a number of reasons why you would want to do this, the most obvious is if you are sure that one of the members of your household will definitely be earning over £60,000 per year and all your benefits would have to be paid back anyway. Further information on the changes to child benefit can be found here: £50,000 limit to Child Benefit

There are also less obvious reasons:

If you have income that you have not previously declared, then you may decide that the risk of completing a Self Assessment Return is not for you as it increases the chances of this undeclared income being caught. We, would of course recommend that you contact us and agree an approach to declare this income to HMRC and attempt to mitigate the penalties.

You may feel that because you are going to lose the majority of this benefit that giving it up is easier than receiving it and then paying the tax on it, however, we would point out that it is your right to receive this benefit and if it is only a few pounds more than the cost of declaring it correctly then it is worth having.

There are also people who just think it is a benefit that they do not need, we do of course respect peoples decision on this matter.

Opting out of child benefit is easy, it is just a matter of completing a form.

This link also contains more information from HMRC on the Child benefit changes.

If you do require assistance regarding any of the matters above then:

Call us to discuss your requirements on 01666 822256.

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