Does the US have child benefit? A USD 2,200 credit once a year, against €518 a month in Berlin

By Skyler Bissell · September 13, 2026 · 10 min read

A family with two children in Seattle gets $4,400 a year from the federal government for them, as a line on the tax return the following spring. The same family in Berlin gets €518 a month, paid into the account by the Familienkasse on a fixed date, €6,216 a year, whatever the parents owe in tax. Both get called child benefit in a loose sense. Only one of them is child benefit in the sense a European parent means, and the difference is worth knowing before you compare the two countries on what they do for families.

The five differences between a credit and a benefit

The dollar totals can come out close over a year. The design does not, and the design is what a household feels. I take the two apart on the five points where they differ, with the figure for each.

1. A benefit is cash; a credit is a smaller tax bill

Kindergeld is money. The Familienkasse pays EUR 259 a month per child to whoever the child lives with, and the household's tax return is a separate matter. Sweden's barnbidrag (SEK 1,250 a month), Norway's barnetrygd (NOK 2,012 a month for every child under 18), Ireland's Child Benefit (EUR 140 a month) and Poland's 800+ programme (PLN 800 a month) work the same way. A parent with no income at all receives the full amount.

The Child Tax Credit, as the IRS sets it out, is a deduction from tax owed. If the household's federal income tax before credits is USD 2,200 or more per child, the credit is worth its face value. If the bill is smaller, the balance is paid out as the additional child tax credit, and that refundable part has its own ceiling per child, set below the headline figure. A family with little or no tax liability therefore gets less than USD 2,200 per child, which is the design choice that separates the two systems more than any amount does. The family on this page, on a household income of USD 150,000, owes far more federal tax than the credit, so it receives the full $4,400. Every figure below assumes that.

That is the design difference. The other four are consequences of it.

2. A benefit arrives monthly; a credit arrives once

The European payments are on a calendar. Germany pays monthly, Sweden on the 20th of each month, Norway monthly, Britain every four weeks, the Netherlands once a quarter, Switzerland with the salary because the employer's family compensation fund pays it through payroll. A household budgets around it.

The American credit is settled when the return is filed, between late January and mid-April of the following year, as a smaller payment to the IRS or a larger refund. A family that has a baby in March 2026 sees the first dollar of the credit in the spring of 2027. A parent can get some of it earlier by lowering withholding through the year, which is the household lending itself the money. The one exception in living memory was 2021, when the American Rescue Plan Act had the IRS pay half of an enlarged credit as monthly deposits from July to December; that ended with the year, and the monthly design has not returned.

3. Most benefits are universal; the credit is means-tested at the top

Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Austria, Ireland, Poland and the Netherlands pay the same amount to every household, whatever it earns. The Child Tax Credit starts to shrink once modified adjusted gross income passes USD 200,000 for a single filer or USD 400,000 for a couple filing jointly, by USD 50 for every USD 1,000 over the line, so a joint filer loses the credit for two children entirely by about USD 488,000. The family on this page is well under the threshold, and the phase-out is set out in childcare subsidies and their income limits for anyone above it.

Two European systems test income harder than the American one. Britain's High Income Child Benefit Charge takes back 1% of the benefit for every GBP 200 the higher earner's income sits above GBP 60,000, all of it at GBP 80,000, which is why this family's London figure below is £701 and a single earner on GBP 80,000 gets nothing. Canada's Child Benefit shrinks with family net income and is close to nothing for a professional household, and Australia's Family Tax Benefit works the same way, so our data carries zero for Toronto and Sydney, a rounding the engine makes against those two cities. Italy's assegno unico shrinks with the household's ISEE to a floor of EUR 58 a month. The universal benefit is a Northern and Central European habit, and the query "does the US have child benefit" usually comes from someone comparing against one of those countries.

4. Per child, the credit sits mid-table

USD 2,200 a year is USD 183 a month. Germany pays USD 3,601 a year per child at current rates, the canton of Zurich USD 3,185, Poland USD 2,581 and Norway USD 2,563, all above the American figure, and Austria's age-banded Familienbeihilfe lands in the same range. Ireland (USD 1,947), Sweden (USD 1,579), Finland (USD 1,390), the Netherlands (USD 1,384) and Italy (USD 811) pay less per child than the credit is worth. Spain and Portugal pay no universal cash at all. The amount is the weakest of the five arguments against the American design, and the one most people reach for first.

5. A benefit follows residence; the credit follows the passport and a number

Kindergeld goes to a parent who lives or works in Germany, whatever their nationality, and a child who lives in another EU state still draws the full German rate. The Child Tax Credit goes to a US taxpayer whose child has a Social Security number and lived with them for more than half the year, and the taxpayer claiming it needs one that is valid for work as well. Where the family lives does not matter to the IRS: an American family in Berlin files a US return and claims the credit for children with SSNs, and the Familienkasse pays Kindergeld to the same household without asking. The two stack, and a foreign benefit does not reduce the credit.

One rule cuts across that for Americans abroad. A filer who excludes salary from US tax with the foreign earned income exclusion cannot claim the refundable part of the credit. For a family whose federal bill after the exclusion is still larger than the credit that changes nothing; for a family whose bill the exclusion has driven to zero, the credit is worth nothing that year. The same choice of tool decides whether a Dutch or Spanish expat tax regime survives the US return at all, which is a separate question for US citizens under the 30% ruling.

The same family, nine cities: what arrives, and when

One household throughout: two earners splitting USD 150,000 at a 100/60 ratio, a three-year-old and a seven-year-old, a two-bedroom rental, restated in local currency abroad at a fixed ratio. The table gives what the state pays for the two children, per month and per year, the interval it arrives on, and the income test the household meets at this income. It is the family from is it cheaper to raise a child in Europe, which prices the childcare and health bills the benefit is set against; I have not repeated those here.

Engine figures, 2026, at the exchange rates in the current build. The American line is the Child Tax Credit at its full value, which this household's federal bill supports; it is shown as USD 0 a month because nothing is paid until the return. Stockholm is two children at the base barnbidrag; the small large-family supplement for a second child is not modelled. London is the statutory rate after the charge, tested on the higher earner, whose salary sits between the GBP 60,000 start and the GBP 80,000 end of the taper. Amsterdam carries the SVB rate for a child under six for both children; the seven-year-old's band pays more, so the Amsterdam line is understated. Means-tested top-ups for low incomes are outside the engine everywhere.

Read down the year column and the American credit looks like a middling European benefit: below Berlin's $7,203, above London's, close to Stockholm's. Read across the month column and it is the only row with a zero in it. That is the whole answer to the question in the title. Whether the difference matters depends on the household. A family on USD 150,000 can wait until April; a family on USD 40,000, whose refundable credit is capped below the headline, cannot, and it is the second family for whom "child benefit" and "child tax credit" are different things in the fridge.

A benefit is a payment. A credit is a settlement.

Per child, across Europe

The per-child rates in the family table above are the engine's own; here they are for a single child, in the source's own unit, for the countries this site's readers most often compare with. Germany: EUR 259 a month, EUR 3,108 a year, paid at the same rate for every child. Sweden: SEK 1,250 a month. Norway: NOK 2,012 a month, one rate from birth to 18 since February 2026. Ireland: EUR 140 a month. Poland: PLN 800 a month. Finland: about EUR 100 a month per child, averaged over a first and a second child, since the second draws a little more. Britain: GBP 27 a week for the eldest and GBP 18 a week for each further child, before the charge. Zurich: CHF 215 a month per child under 12, through the employer. France pays allocations familiales from the second child, income-tiered, so Paris carries only EUR 230 a year per child in our data.

The whole set, 71 countries in local currency and US dollars a month, is the child benefit by country ranking, and Germany's eligibility ladder, the six-month application deadline and the rules for children living abroad are in Kindergeld for expats. Each figure above is the standing rate for a child; what a particular household draws in Britain, Canada, Australia or Italy is the standing rate after that country's income test, and the calculator applies the test to your own income.

How the engine counts the two

Our comparison pages carry one line for the state's payment toward the children, and it holds a benefit or a credit depending on the country. In the American cities the line is the Child Tax Credit at face value, added to the household's net cash on the assumption that the federal bill supports it, which is true from a modest income upward and false below it. In Germany, the Nordics, the Netherlands and Switzerland it is the monthly cash, times twelve, times the children. In Britain it is the statutory rate after the High Income Child Benefit Charge, tested on the higher earner as HMRC tests it. The line is the same size on both sides of the Atlantic at this family's income and it is the reason a Berlin result runs ahead of what the German tax rate alone would suggest.

What the line does not capture is timing, and I have not tried to price it. A benefit paid monthly is worth slightly more than the same sum paid fourteen months later, and a refundable credit capped below its face value is worth less to a low-income family than the engine's full-value line says. Both effects run the same way, against the American design, so treating the credit as cash is conservative toward the United States. If you want the two-children ledger the benefit sits inside, with childcare and health beside it, it is in what it costs to raise kids, and the Seattle to Berlin comparison for a family shows the benefit landing in a whole household budget.

FAQ

The ledger this benefit sits inside, childcare and the household's health spending beside it for the same family, is in is it cheaper to raise a child in Europe. The New York to Stockholm comparison for a family runs a published household through both designs. For your own children's ages, the calculator prints the benefit line for any pair of cities, in the month it arrives.

Sources. The credit: IRS, Child Tax Credit (amount, the refundable additional child tax credit, the Social Security number rule, the phase-out) and the IRS instructions for Schedule 8812 (the Form 2555 rule), retrieved 13 September 2026. The 2021 advance payments: the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, section 9611. Kindergeld: BMFSFJ, Kindergeld. Barnbidrag: Försäkringskassan, barnbidrag och flerbarnstillägg. Barnetrygd: NAV, barnetrygd. Kinderbijslag: SVB, child benefit. Child Benefit and the charge: HMRC, Child Benefit rates and the High Income Child Benefit Charge. Child Benefit (Ireland): gov.ie. 800+: gov.pl, Rodzina 800+. Kinderzulage: canton of Zurich, Familienzulagen. Every other value carries its own source and date in data/_meta.json, and the price lines behind our comparison pages split between official and crowdsourced sources as described in the methodology.

Figures here come from cityparity's per-city engine and were current at publication; benefit amounts, credit rules and exchange rates move, so treat any single number as a strong estimate and run your own inputs. This is general information about how the two systems are designed and it is not tax advice. Where our comparison pages quote an equivalent salary, it is the bar an offer has to clear in the destination city and it is not a job offer. See the methodology.