Key takeaways
- Child Benefit runs at £27.05 a week for the eldest child and £17.90 for each other child, and 2026/27 holds 53 Child Benefit weeks, so HMRC puts a two-child award at £2,382.35.
- The charge takes 1% of that award for every £200 of adjusted net income above £60,000, which costs £716 at £70,000 with one child and £1,665 with three.
- Stacked on 40% income tax and 2% National Insurance, the effective marginal rate across the band is 49.17% with one child, 53.91% with two and 58.66% with three.
- A £1,000 gross pension contribution at £70,000 with two children cuts income tax by £400 and the charge by £119, a net cost of £481.
- 685,000 families had opted out of Child Benefit payments by August 2025, and take-up fell to 87% of eligible children, down from 97% in 2012.
What the high income child benefit charge takes between £60,000 and £80,000
You earn somewhere between £60,000 and £80,000, you have children, and you want to know what the high income child benefit charge takes off you. Here's the answer before the explanation.
HMRC's published Child Benefit rates for 2026/27 are £27.05 a week for your eldest or only child and £17.90 a week for every other child. Entitlement accrues weekly, and HMRC's own calculator puts the full-year award for 2026/27 at £1,433.65 for one child, £2,382.35 for two and £3,331.05 for three. Divide any of those by the weekly rate and you get 53, not 52: this tax year runs from one Monday to another and holds an extra Child Benefit week. The high income child benefit charge for 2026/27 then takes a percentage of that award, set by one person's adjusted net income.
| Adjusted net income | Charge rate | One child | Two children | Three children |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £60,100 | nil | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| £60,200 | 1% | £14 | £23 | £33 |
| £65,000 | 25% | £358 | £595 | £832 |
| £70,000 | 50% | £716 | £1,191 | £1,665 |
| £75,000 | 75% | £1,075 | £1,786 | £2,498 |
| £80,000 | 100% | £1,433 | £2,382 | £3,331 |
GOV.UK puts the rule in one sentence: "You'll pay back 1% of your Child Benefit for every £200 you earn over £60,000." At £80,000 the percentage reaches 100 and the charge equals the whole award. It can't go any higher than that, because the legislation caps it.
Two things in the table catch people out. The first is that your partner's income doesn't appear anywhere in it, and neither does your household's. The second is the top row, where being £100 over the threshold costs nothing at all.
The charge moves in £200 steps, which is why £60,100 is free
Section 681C of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 sets the charge as an "appropriate percentage" of the Child Benefit award. That percentage is your adjusted net income minus £60,000, divided by £200. The same section then says that if the result isn't a whole number, it's rounded down.
So the taper isn't smooth. At £60,100 the formula produces a fraction of a point, which rounds away to nothing. HMRC's calculator says so in plain words: "There is no tax charge if your income is below £60,200." At £60,200 the percentage is exactly 1%, which is £14.34 of the one-child award, £23.82 of the two-child award and £33.31 of the three-child award. The charge is then rounded down to a whole pound as well, which is why the table shows £14, £23 and £33.
Every further £200 of income adds one more percentage point of the award. Between the steps, extra income carries no charge at all. Across the whole £20,000 band those steps average into a slope, and the slope is the number worth knowing.
The effective marginal rate runs from 49.17% with one child to 58.66% with three
For 2026/27 the UK higher rate of income tax is 40% on income from £50,271 to £125,140, and employee National Insurance is 2% on weekly earnings above £967. Anyone earning between £60,000 and £80,000 from a job is inside both, so 42% of the next pound is already gone before the charge is counted.
The charge then adds the annual award divided by £20,000. That's 7.17 pence in the pound for one child, 11.91 pence for two and 16.66 pence for three. The chart plots the totals.
For comparison, the 45% additional rate doesn't begin until £125,140. A second taper does run above £100,000, where the Personal Allowance falls by £1 for every £2 of adjusted net income until it reaches zero at £125,140. That's a separate mechanism, but it reads the same measure of income, and the two can overlap for a family with a large bonus.
Scotland is steeper. Scottish income tax charges 42% from £43,663 to £75,000 and 45% from £75,001, so the base before the charge is 44% or 47% rather than 42%. A Scottish taxpayer on £70,000 with two children is looking at 55.91%.
Pension contributions reduce adjusted net income, and the charge follows it down
Adjusted net income isn't your salary. GOV.UK defines it as total taxable income before Personal Allowances and after certain reliefs, including pension contributions and Gift Aid, with savings interest and dividends counted in. That definition is the whole reason pension contributions move the charge.
How the contribution is made changes the arithmetic. HMRC's step 1 deducts payments made gross to a pension scheme. Step 3 deducts the grossed-up amount of a relief at source contribution, so every £1 you pay in takes £1.25 off net income, because the provider adds basic rate tax. The difference between those two routes is set out in our guide to relief at source and net pay.
HMRC's own worked example runs it end to end. Clara's total taxable income is £70,000. She pays £4,750 of gross pension contributions and £1,000 of Gift Aid, and her adjusted net income lands at £64,000.
Now take someone at £70,000 with two children, whose charge is £1,191. A £1,000 gross pension contribution drops adjusted net income to £69,000, which cuts the charge rate by 5 points and the charge to £1,072. The same £1,000 attracts 40% income tax relief, worth £400. So £1,000 of pension costs £481 of take-home pay. Across the band the taper is worth 11.91 points, which puts the effective relief rate at 51.91%.
Notice that 51.91% sits two points below the 53.91% marginal rate. The gap is National Insurance, which relief on a personal contribution doesn't recover. It's the same gap the salary sacrifice National Insurance saving turns on.
Scaled up, taking a £70,000 adjusted net income down to £60,000 needs £10,000 of gross contribution. Under relief at source that's £8,000 paid in, £2,000 added by the provider, and a further £2,000 reclaimed through Self Assessment. The charge saved is the whole £1,191, so £10,000 of pension lands for £4,809 of take-home pay.
Two statutory limits sit over that. Relief is available on contributions worth up to 100% of your annual earnings, and the annual allowance is £60,000 for 2026/27. The allowance only tapers where threshold income exceeds £200,000, which is far above this band, though the pension annual allowance taper matters for anyone whose bonus crosses it.
Two households on the same money can pay very different amounts
The serious criticism of the charge is structural, and it has nothing to do with the rate. The test reads one person's adjusted net income and never the household's. Two partners each earning £60,000 have £120,000 between them and pay nothing. A single earner on £80,000, raising the same children on two thirds of the money, loses the whole award. Lower down the income scale the household is tested rather than the individual, and the two child limit on Universal Credit was removed for assessment periods from 6 April 2026.
The government examined this objection and declined to act on it. The Autumn Budget 2024 document says it "will not proceed with the reform to base the HICBC on household incomes", because doing so at a household threshold of £120,000 to £160,000, "where no families would lose out", would have cost £1.4 billion by 2029-30.
So the objection stands and the published answer to it is a price, not a defence of the design. That's the thing to understand if you're searching to find out whether the high income child benefit charge is being scrapped. Nothing has replaced it, and the version of section 681C in force on 5 October 2026 still reads £60,000 and £200.
685,000 families opted out, and take-up has fallen to 87%
The charge changes behaviour, and HMRC's Child Benefit statistics measure how much. At 31 August 2025 there were 7.55 million families claiming Child Benefit and 6.87 million receiving payments. Alongside those, 685,000 families had claimed and then opted out of the money, which removes the charge without giving up the claim.
Opting out keeps two things. National Insurance credits still count towards the State Pension, and the child is still issued a National Insurance number automatically rather than applying shortly before turning 16.
The harder number is take-up. The share of eligible children claimed for has fallen from 97% in 2012 to 87% in 2025, the lowest in the published series, and HMRC links the decline to the charge. Take-up is weakest among children aged 0 to 5, at 69% to 84%. Those families aren't opted out. They never claimed, so they lose the National Insurance credits as well as the money.
The 2024 threshold increase pushed back against that. HMRC's costing put 485,000 families in a better position, including 170,000 who stopped being liable at all, and the opt-out count has now fallen for two years in a row. Of those with a liability in the 2020 to 2021 tax year, 77% were male and 23% female, while 87% of Child Benefit claims were held by women.
What this arithmetic cannot tell you
Everything above is the statutory calculation, and the statutory calculation has limitations.
It assumes adjusted net income is known. For a salaried employee it usually is. For anyone with dividends, rental profit, savings interest or a bonus that lands either side of 5 April, it isn't known until the year has closed. That's why the charge is settled afterwards, through Self Assessment or an adjustment to a tax code.
The 42% base also assumes earned income taxed under the UK rates. Dividend and savings income carry different rates, so a household whose income above £60,000 is investment income doesn't face 49.17% or 58.66%. The UK dividend tax rates and the order of taxation set that out.
The table prices one tax year for a family claiming for the whole of it. A child born in November, or one who leaves full-time education in July, gets a part-year award and a smaller charge, and every figure above moves. The high income child benefit charge calculator that produced these numbers, listed on GOV.UK as the Child Benefit tax calculator, takes part-year claims as an input.
And none of this settles whether the charge is good policy. The 77% male share of liabilities and the 87% female share of claims describe who pays and who claims. They don't decide the fairness argument in either direction.
What would change these numbers
Three things move the table, and only one of them needs a Budget.
The first is the annual uprating of Child Benefit. The rates went from £26.05 and £17.25 in 2025/26 to £27.05 and £17.90 in 2026/27. Because the charge is a percentage of the award, a bigger award makes the taper steeper rather than shallower. Every uprating lifts the effective marginal rate between £60,000 and £80,000 for every family standing in it, and so does a 53-week year.
The second is your own income. The £60,000 and £80,000 figures are cash amounts and haven't moved since April 2024. Pay growth pulls families into the band the same way frozen thresholds pull them into higher rate tax, a mechanism the income tax threshold freeze works through in detail.
The third is a Finance Act. The £60,000 threshold and the £200 step were both written into section 681C by the Finance (No. 2) Act 2024, with effect from 6 April 2024. A Budget could move either, or revive the household-income reform the Treasury priced at £1.4 billion and dropped.
The thing to watch isn't the threshold, though. It's the uprating announcement, because that one steepens the slope every April without anybody calling it a tax change.