Child Benefit is now a Tax Return issue

New rules governing the entitlement to child benefit come into force on 7 Jan 2013.

Until now, child benefit has never been means tested and has always been paid to the mother of the child. If your household income exceeds £50,000 then the chances are that the child benefit will be clawed back from you, in stages, so that by the time your household income exceeds £60,000 the whole amount of your child benefit may be reduced to Nil.

The rules (as you might expect) are not quite as simple as that, and what is going to happen in some cases is that a man may have to repay child benefit which their spouse/partner has received, even if the child in question is not his child. That also means that as accountants we will have to ask you a few searching personal questions after 5 Apr 2013 in order to be able to work out which figures go into which box on your tax return. And your spouse/partner may need to give you the details so that you can give them to us!