Ireland 
USA Spring Budget 2024: Chancellor Jeremy Hunt raises threshold on High-Income Child Benefit Charge
Changes to the child benefit system means more families will be able to claim extra financial support
Alice Haine, Personal Finance Analyst at Bestinvest by Evelyn Partners, the wealth manager, comments:
“Raising the threshold at which the High-Income Child Benefit Charge (HICBC) is applied to £60,000 from April will be welcomed by parents up and down the country along with the longer-term plan to move it to a household-based system by April 2026.
“Under rules in place for the past decade, parents claiming child benefit start paying some of the benefit back once one partner in a household earns taxable income of more than £50,000 a year. Child benefit is then withdrawn completely when one partner earns more than £60,000 a year.
“This has been particularly unfair for single-income families because one parent earning above £50,000 currently faces the HICBC, but two parents earning £49,000 each escape it completely and receive their child benefit entitlement in full. Similarly, a couple where one partner earns just above £50,000 loses out against a family with a total gross income of £99,000.
“Increasing the clawback threshold from £50,000 to £60,000 and extending the top of the taper at which the benefit is withdrawn completely to £80,000 will mean 170,000 less people will be penalised. But the unfairness won’t end entirely until the benefit is based on the overall household income rather than that of the highest earner, something that is not going to happen for more than two years.”
About Bestinvest by Evelyn Partners
Bestinvest by Evelyn Partners is a multi-award-winning, digital investment platform and coaching service for people who choose to make their own investment decisions but with the support of tools, insights and qualified professionals. It offers access to thousands of funds, investment trusts, ETFs and shares through a range of account types, including an Individual Savings Account, a Junior ISA for children, a Self-Invested Personal Pension and General Investment Account.
Alongside providing investors access to an extensive choice of investments, Bestinvest also offers a wide range of ready-made portfolios for people seeking a managed approach that suits their risk profile, saving them the need to select and monitor their funds themselves. These include a highly competitively priced ‘Smart’ range that invests through low-cost passive funds, as well as an ‘Expert’ range that invests with ‘best-of-breed' managers.
Bestinvest provides investors with a unique range of new features to help people better manage their long-term savings, including free investment coaching from qualified financial planners, low-cost fixed fee advice packages and advanced tools to help people plan goals and monitor progress towards achieving them.
Bestinvest is part of Evelyn Partners, the UK’s leading wealth management and professional services group created by the merger of Tilney and Smith & Williamson in 2020. Evelyn Partners is trusted with the management of £62.2 billion of assets (as of 30 June 2024) by its clients, who are private investors, family trusts, entrepreneurs, businesses, charities, financial advisers and other professional intermediaries.
Bestinvest is a trading name of Evelyn Partners Investment Management Services Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
For more information, please visit https://www.bestinvest.co.uk