People earning less than £80,000 urged to claim HMRC benefit worth £3,148

People earning less than £80,000 per year are being urged to claim a HMRC benefit worth thousands of pounds per person per year.

Child Benefit is support for parents or carers to help with the cost of raising their children and is paid by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC). The benefit entitles you to an allowance for each child you have under the age of 16, or under 20 if they stay in education or training, as well as National Insurance credits towards your State Pension and a National Insurance number for your child.

Under the new rates, which increased in April, you’ll get £26.05 per week for one child which amounts to £1,354.60 over a year and each additional child gets £17.25 per week. So if you have two children you’ll get £2,251.60 per year and those with three children will get £3,148 per year. But there is no limit - other than the Benefit Cap - which means if you had four children, or five, and so on, you could get even more than £3,148, with £897 for each additional child.

Currently, the maximum amount you can earn to receive any Child Benefit is £80,000, although if your income is more than £60,000 per year you may have to pay the High Income Child Benefit Charge.

HMRC issued a reminder for people to check if they’re entitled to the benefit and urged high earners not to miss out. In a post on X, it said: “Think you earn too much to receive Child Benefit payments? Check again to make sure you’re not missing out on money. To see what you could get, use our Child Benefit tax calculator below, before restarting payments online or in the HMRC app.”

If you or your partner earn £60,000 or less per year then you can claim the full amount of Child Benefit if the child lives with you, or if you're paying the same weekly amount as the benefit towards looking after them. Only one parent or carer can claim it so you can decide between yourselves who gets it.

You can claim Child Benefit 48 hours after you’ve registered the birth of your child, or once a child comes to live with you and it can be backdated for up to three months.

Child Benefit can also be used to qualify for National Insurance, if for example you didn't work because you were looking after a child, it can be used to earn a National Insurance year towards your pension.

Each year, Child Benefit is increased in line with inflation. In April, it went up by 1.7% to the current amounts.