Has HMRC done enough to solve the botched implementation of child benefit charges?

You’ve just had a baby. Life is upside down, but in a good way. A couple of months in, you are talking to your antenatal group and someone mentions child benefit.

It’s not something you’d have thought you’d be eligible for, as you and your partner earn too much to get any benefits, as a rule. You go to the HMRC website, fill out the form and get a letter back. ‘I am writing to tell you that you are entitled to child benefit at £20.70 a week’, it begins. ‘Brill, that will pay for the nappies’, you think.

So you take it and you are £1,076.40 a year to the good, at current rates. That’s just for child one. You could receive a bit more benefit if you have a second child, but at a lower amount, and you note there’s a two child limit. You note something about a tax charge for households receiving child benefit but where one partner is earning more than £50,000.