October deadline for Parents liable for Child Benefit Charge

*Please note the information in this article may be out of date

Parents over the earning threshold for the new Child Benefit charge have less than a month to register for Self Assessment or face penalties say HMRC.

Tue, 10 Sep 2013

Parents over the earning threshold (£50,000 per year) for the new Child Benefit charge have until October 5th to register for Self Assessment or face penalties say HMRC. 

Any parents who earn more than £50,000 a year and have stayed in receipt of their Child Benefit must pay the High Income Child Benefit Charge. HMRC's means of collecting this charge is by requiring those parents affected to make a Self Assessment tax return.

If you are liable to pay the new High Income Benefit Charge, and you are not already registered for Self Assessment,  you must do so by the 5th of October or face possible penalties from HMRC. 

Approximately 400,000 or so parents have already chosen to opt out of receiving Child Benefit payments altogether. Parents should note that even if they opted out of Child Benefit payments for this tax year, if they received any Child Benefit payments after the 7th of January 2013 when the scheme was launched, they will be liable to pay the charge and required to register with HMRC for Self Assessment. 

According to HMRC: "You are liable to pay the tax charge if all of the following statements apply, or applied to you in the 2012/13 tax year: 

- you have an individual income of over £50,000 a year, and
- either you or your partner received any Child Benefit payments after 7 January 2013, and
- your income for the tax year is higher than your partner’s. The partner with the higher income is liable to pay the charge if both partners have income over £50,000." 

See our earlier articles for more information on the Child Benefit Charge and ways to reduce how much you have to pay. You can also check out our Child Benefit Calculator to figure out how much you stand to lose from the new charge. 

If you are not self employed or already registered for Self Assessment, you will need to fill out the online form SA1 "Registering for Self Assessment and getting a tax return". You can contact the Self Assessment helpline on 0300 200 3310, 8 am to 8 pm, Monday to Friday; 8 am to 4 pm Saturday.

You may also find our article on Tips to filling out your Self Assessment Tax Return worth reading.