Martin Lewis has broken some bad news for families after getting confirmation that he’s lost his campaign on Child Benefit changes following the Labour Budget today.
The Budget took in everything from DWP and HMRC changes to state pensioners, the Triple Lock, a fuel duty freeze and the end of the Personal Allowance freeze on Income Tax bands – but not until 2028.
For several years, Money Saving Expert founder has been lobbying both the previous government and this new government on an ‘unfairness’ baked into the Child Benefit system.
Currently, Child Benefit payments are issued to parents earning any wage in theory, but they begin to be ‘repaid’ back to HMRC in your tax bill once you earn £50,000 or more, and from this year, £60,000 or more, until the money given to you to support raising children is completely ‘tapered off’ to nothing at £80,000 and beyond.
The unfairness with this system is that it only looks at individual income, not household, so two people earning £59,999 each would get the full Child Benefit payments but one person earning £60,001 would start to lose the benefit, even though they earn almost £60,000 less than the couple.
Today, Martin Lewis announced that Labour has, within Budget documents issued this afternoon, confirmed that it will not change the current system despite Martin’s campaigns.
He said: “NEWS: Withing govt docs it says it will NOT shift child benefit to household income from individual income as previous govt had announced (and I and others had campaigned for).
“This is a shame and leaves inequity rife, bad news for single parent and single earner families. From 2025 employees will be able to pay the higher income child benefit charge through your tax code, and self assessment forms will be pre-populated with child benefit data.”
