Child benefit cut may spoil appetite for success From January, the payments will be reduced for families with one parent earning more than £50,000. Families with one parent earning more than £60,000 will receive no child benefit. An estimated 500,000 people will need to fill out lengthy self-assessment tax returns for the first time in order to receive the payments, under the reforms. Mr Field said several Tories feared the plans were a "tax on aspiration." He supported moves to cut the deficit but was concerned about "the practicalities of this policy." "It is alleged that it is going to raise £2.5 billion but I think it's going to be ruinously expensive," he said. I think there is going to be quite a big sense of injustice about this. People are living much more complex lives. A lot are working on a consultancy basis. They won't know three quarters of the way through the year whether they're going to be earning £50,000. There will be the sort of incentive for them not to work or to put through invoices late. HM Revenue and Customs is writing to all families affected by the changes to alert them to what they must do. The plan is to form part of the Government's deficit reduction programme, and it is hoped that it will contribute to savings of £18 billion from the welfare budget by 2015. Some independent tax experts have claimed it will be too complicated. A spokesman for the Treasury said: "This change does not constitute a disincentive to work, people whose income is between £50,000 and £60,000 will not lose more of their child benefit than they gain as their income rises. In a period when the Government is having to reduce welfare spending, it is very difficult to justify continuing to pay for the child benefit of the wealthiest 15 per cent of families in society.