How To Claim Child Benefit

Hello, my name is Lee Healey and I'm managing director of Income Max the "Entitlement Expert." We help people to make sense of and understand the benefits in tax credit system. Today, we're going to tell you lots about the benefits and tax credits that are available.

Now, child benefit is a universal benefit which all parents can claim when you've got dependent children. Obviously, more often than not, you'll claim child benefit when you have a baby, or, perhaps, if you come into the country a little bit later, you might need to claim child benefit at a later date. But, generally, most people will claim child benefit, obviously, when they first have their child.

You normally get a form in one of two ways. First of all, the child benefit form comes in the bounty pack that you normally get when you give birth in any UK hospital. So, if you look carefully in that bounty pack, there'll be a child benefit claim form in there which you can actually complete and send off to the child benefit center which is a Department of High Term Revenue and Customs.

The alternative to that, is actually filling out a child benefit form online. With most forms, they're online there, with the child benefit form you can actually fill the form out on the screen, but, you do actually have to print out the form. So, you can actually type in all your details, but, then you actually print the form and it has to then go off to the child benefit center.

Now, where can you find more information on child benefit? Well, basically, if you visit the High Term Customs and Revenue website, it has a host of information on child benefit. The qualifying criteria, I never see, how to submit your claim, how much child benefit is, and, so on, and, so forth. And the web address for that is 'www.

hmrc.gov.uk/child benefit.

' Don't forget, child benefit is actually paid per child. Now, how it normally works is you'll get an amount for your first child and then after that, you'll get an extra amount of child benefit for each child after that. So, it's not just paid for your first child.

If you have more children after that, you need to kind of reclaim child benefits and make sure you're getting the correct amount. .