Child Benefit charge calculator 2026/27
The High Income Child Benefit Charge is worked out from adjusted net income, not from your salary. See what yours is, what Child Benefit pays each week, and what a pension contribution changes.
What a pension contribution does to your adjusted net income and your charge
The marginal rate is income tax and National Insurance only — it does not include the Child Benefit charge, which is in its own column because it is a charge on the year rather than a rate on the next pound. Read the two together: a contribution that takes your adjusted net income under the threshold removes the whole charge, which no marginal rate can show.
Child Benefit from 6 April 2026
These are weekly rates, paid every four weeks in most cases. The yearly figure in the result above is these rates over the Child Benefit weeks the tax year holds, and a Child Benefit week begins on a Monday — which is why the count is not always 52.
Why the rates are weekly and the charge is yearly
Child Benefit is paid for benefit weeks, and a benefit week begins on a Monday. So a tax year holds as many benefit weeks as it holds Mondays, and that is not always 52. 2026/27 holds 53. The tax year runs from 6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027 and both of those dates are a Monday, so 53 Mondays fall inside it — where 2025/26, which began on a Sunday, held 52. That is why the yearly figure above is 53 weeks of Child Benefit and not 52: for two children it is £44.95 a week, which is £2,382.35 over the year rather than the £2,337.40 fifty-two weeks would give. HMRC counts it the same way — its PAYE manual sets out the method at PAYE130030, and its tax return notes print the count for a year once that year’s return is issued. The 2026/27 notes are not out yet, so our rules file carries HMRC’s own method applied to the calendar, checked against the counts HMRC published for nine earlier tax years.
The taper is settled in the same way. It is written into section 681C of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 as text, and the legislation and HMRC’s own guidance state it in the same terms. That section also decides the rounding, and the order of it: the Child Benefit for the year is taken down to a whole pound, then the percentage to a whole point, then the charge. HMRC’s own published example applies the percentage before the first of those and prints a figure £79 lower than the section gives; the figure above follows the section.
Common questions
How is the charge worked out?
Your adjusted net income is compared with the £60,000 the charge starts at. For every whole £200 above it, one per cent of your Child Benefit for the year comes back as tax, up to all of it. The percentage is a whole number, so it goes up in steps rather than smoothly: £60,199 of adjusted net income gives nothing and £60,200 gives one per cent. The charge is settled through Self Assessment, not through your payroll.
Which of us pays it?
Whichever of you has the higher adjusted net income, whether or not that is the person Child Benefit is paid to. This page asks for one income, so the figure it gives is yours if you are that person. If your partner earns more than you, the charge is theirs and the figure to work out is theirs.
What is adjusted net income?
It is your total taxable income less the things the rules let you take off it, chiefly pension contributions given relief and gift aid donations. It is not your salary and it is not your take-home pay. On £62,000 with no contributions it is £62,000.00, and the table above shows what happens to it when you pay into a pension.
How much is Child Benefit a week?
From 6 April 2026 it is £27.05 a week for the eldest or only child and £17.90 a week for each other child. Those rates are confirmed against two official documents. The yearly figure the charge is worked out on is those rates over the Child Benefit weeks the tax year holds — a Child Benefit week begins on a Monday, so the count is not always 52, and HMRC sets out how to count them in its PAYE manual.