Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of basing High Income Child Benefit Tax Charge on household than individual income.

The High Income Child Benefit Charge is calculated on an individual rather than a household basis, in line with other tax policy. Basing HICBC on household income would mean finding out the incomes of everyone in all of the 7.8m households currently registered for Child Benefit.

This would be costly to the Government and burdensome for the majority of claimants who currently do not need to provide information to HM Revenue and Customs. The current approach only requires a small number of claimants to complete a self-assessment, while leaving the majority of claimants unaffected.