Family Allowance was introduced as a means of encouraging families to keep children in education. This was changed to Child Benefit and the reason why this is still paid has long gone.
The threshold for Child Benefit is £50,000 a year (I assume household income not individual).
Child benefit should only be paid to those families that actually need it.
If you have 2 expensive high end cars sat on your drive worth over £20,000 each, when new, then you obviously do not need Child Benefit. If you take family holidays at £5,000 a trip once a year obviously you do not need Child benefit. If you have a caravan, mobile home, second home or more, you do not need Child benefit. A swimming pool or jacuzzi in your grounds you do not need Child Benefit.
Child benefit should be there for those that need it. Stop paying those people who don’t need it and pay the people that do need it more.
Or
Abolish Child Benefit altogether and raise the lower limit of when you have to pay tax. People receiving universal credit would have their rates adjusted if they have children. This obviously would benefit all those people on lower incomes.
The losers would be the middle wage earners. For 2 children that would be £34 a week (£5 per day), 1 takeaway, 11 pints of beer or cups of coffee, 3 packets of cigarettes, tank of fuel or perhaps 1 less shopping trip for clothing.
A real issue is London where wages are the same but living costs are higher than elsewhere in the UK but the Child Benefit is the same no matter where you live. Surely people who live in more expensive areas require more benefit at least to cover their housing costs?
Child Benefit has lost the reason why it was introduced. It has no purpose, its needs to be distributed to those that need it. It needs to be removed and dealt with in other ways which would be more efficient saving money and done fairly so those that need get and those that do not need don’t get.
1980-11