The law is evolving all the time, and it can be difficult to keep track of all the changes that will affect your life and that of your family. Important updates to legislation or to benefits are easy to miss.
We thought it would helpful to summarize, in a series of blog posts, some of the things that happened in 2017 that may impact your family. These changes affect families with children, parents receiving social assistance, parents using a sperm or egg donor, parents using surrogacy and surrogates, parents of adult children with disabilities, and grandparents seeking custody of, or access to, their grandchildren.
Over the next month or so, we’ll explore five major changes from 2017. This week we’re looking at the Canada Child Benefit.
Increases to the Canada Child Benefit
The federal government introduced the Canada Child Benefit (CCB) in July 2016, which replaced both the Child Tax Benefit and the Universal Child Care Benefit. The CCB consists of tax-free, monthly payments from July of one year to June of the next year. The factors that impact your CCB include the number of children that live with you, their ages, their eligibility for the Child Disability Benefit, your adjusted family net income, and your marital status.
The basic benefit until June 2018 is $6,400 per year for children under the age of 6 and $5,400 per year for children aged 6 to 17. Once your adjusted family net income is over $30,000, the CCB is reduced on a sliding scale, depending on your adjusted family net income and number of eligible children. For more information on claiming your CCB – which requires that both you and your spouse or common-law partner file a return every year, even if you did not have income that year – see the Government of Canada’s website here.
The CCB is expected to increase from July 2018, as the federal government announced that it will adjust the benefit for inflation two years ahead of schedule in its Fall Economic Statement, released in October 2017. Stay tuned for more updates!
If you would like to learn more about how any of the above changes may impact you, contact our Family Law Group.
