HMRC publishes Child Benefit take-up statistics showing record low

HMRC published Child Benefit take-up statistics on 23 April 2026, covering May 2025. The estimates show Child Benefit was being claimed for 87% of eligible children across the UK, the lowest figure since HMRC began producing the statistics in 2003 and ten points below the peak take-up rate of 97% recorded in 2012¹.

The decline coincides with the High Income Child Benefit Charge (HICBC), introduced in 2013. Reforms announced at the 2024 Spring Budget raised the HICBC threshold from an income of £50,000 a year to £60,000 and halved the taper, so entitlement is now only fully withdrawn at £80,000 a year¹. The number of families opting out has fallen for two years running, reversing a decade-long upward trend, but the HICBC tax take is down by around £230 million on the previous year, from £593 million to £360 million¹.

Overall take-up still fell by 0.9% between August 2024 and August 2025, a slightly faster rate of decline than the year before¹. Age breakdowns going back to 2011 show the fall is concentrated among younger children: take-up for newborns had fallen to 69%, compared with 96% for the same age in 2011, while take-up at age 15 is close to unchanged. In 2011 take-up was between 94% and 99% across every age from 0 to 15¹.

Source: HMRC, Child Benefit Statistics 2025, Table 15, as reported¹. The chart stops at age 15 because take-up has always declined from age 16 onwards, reflecting uncertainty over whether children remain in approved education and so remain eligible¹.

Since it was introduced in 2013, the HICBC has raised around £5 billion in cumulative tax revenue. Over the same period, if take-up had held at the 2012 peak of 97%, Child Benefit spending would have been approximately £9 billion higher than it actually was. In 2024-25, the HICBC raised £360 million in tax while the take-up shortfall had reduced Child Benefit spending by around £1.4 billion¹.

Why it matters for households

The 87% figure is an average across the UK. For families with a newborn, the estimate is 69%, meaning roughly three in ten eligible children of that age were not covered by a claim in May 2025¹. Because the fall is concentrated among families who never claim rather than those who stop, the effect builds as each year's new parents enter the system. The report states that on current trends the headline take-up rate will continue to fall for several years even if new-claim behaviour stabilises, because the remaining pre-HICBC cohort is ageing out of the count¹.

The report also states that the £9 billion shortfall represents payments that would have flowed to families entitled to Child Benefit, in full or in part for households in the HICBC taper zone, and that the cost of low take-up falls on families the policy was never meant to penalise¹. Child Benefit rules, rates and the high income charge are set out in our guide to claiming for a child, with the rules for children staying on in education covered in Child Benefit after 16.

What happens next

The report draws a parallel with the Winter Fuel Payment, which it says has now come into operation with a £35,000 income threshold and the full payment clawed back for anyone above it. It states that it would be optimistic to expect Winter Fuel take-up in ten years to look much different from Child Benefit take-up today¹. No further HMRC publication date is given in the material.