Can Child Tax Credits be backdated?

Marcus3344

Hi all


Strange question I know but our circumstances have not really been normal.
We have endured a 8 year battle with HMRC, over an over payment claim.
Finally at the back end of last year, and huge amount of paperwork and hassle, HMRC agreed with our argument and found in our favour that their claim for a 10K over payment was indeed their error.


Now, during this lengthy debacle there was a period of 24 months when my wife and myself were not working.
I appreciate that looking back we should have claimed Child Tax Credits as well as other benefits such as school meal etc..... at that time.
However we were both really struggling with depression and I was looking after my terminally ill father.
Having such a lack of faith in HMRC, we also felt that any new claims would only complicate matters so we plodded along in our own little bubble and used all of our own savings and monies to survive this difficult time (foolish I know - as we are both now in a very large DMP!!!)


I have asked HMRC to back date our claim for CTC as we should have been entitled to it.
They have refused stating we should have claimed it at the time, which under normal circumstances I would agree, but I feel we may have a case due to the over payment debacle we were going through.


My question is, has anyone ever known HMRC to backdate a CTC claim?
Is it worth me contacting The Adjudicator?


Any feedback would be really appreciated :-)


Marcus

Darksparkle

They backdate for 31 days. The circumstances they'll consider for extended backdating are here:

https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/tax-credits-technical-manual/tctm06104

I believe you'd need to follow HMRCs complaint procedure regarding the decision not to backdate before going to the adjudicator.