Partners daughter not registered at our address with the child benefit office.

Wrighty1977

Comms69, we do not know why the child benefit still gets paid into my partners bank account if her ex registered their daughter at his address and has been claiming child benefit ever since. We do not actually know this is what happened.

If my partners ex has done this my partner has had no part in it. She has not been falsely claiming child benefit, she was just unaware she had to pay tax on it.

Comms69

Wrighty1977 wrote: »

Comms69, we do not know why the child benefit still gets paid into my partners bank account if her ex registered their daughter at his address and has been claiming child benefit ever since. We do not actually know this is what happened. - Obviously you've notice the approx. £600 a year she's been getting.

If my partners ex has done this my partner has had no part in it. She has not been falsely claiming child benefit, she was just unaware she had to pay tax on it.

Sorry that doesn't sound true; even if it is.


Why would the ex not claim the money himself?


I'm not trying to be harsh; I'm simply asking the exact same question any investigator would ask

HoneyNutLoop

In no particular order:
1) If the child benefit claim is in your partner’s name, her ex can’t change the address. It’s not his benefit.
2) if the child benefit is in your partner’s name, eventually HMRC are going to tie up the fact she should have been completing a self-assessment due to her income. The benefit claim will be against her national insurance number as will her income. This will catch up to you, it’s just a matter of time.
3) if you tell them that her daughter has only just moved in, they are probably going to want back all the child benefit she’s had for her daughter for the last 4 years. Oh, and you’d conciously be making a fraudulent statement rather than just being ignorant of the law, as is the current situation.
4) it seems highly unlikely that her child benefit claim would end and her ex started claiming it but nominated for it to be paid into her account. Even less likely that this would happen without HMRC telling her that her child benefit claim had ended.
5) this is going to catch up with her. It’s just a question of when. There is nothing that you can do about that now. Your only choice is how you handle the situation. Do you want to be caught or do you want to tackle the situation head on?

Wrighty1977

Thanks you HoneyNutLoop, we owe £2,700 at present so we're going to let the child benefit office know her daughter has been living with us all along as soon as we've saved it up. Does anyone have a rough idea how long it will be from when we inform the child benefit office until when they will tell us how much we owe and when we've got to pay it? Does anyone also know, if my partners ex did change the address to reduce the amount of maintenance he was paying what the likelihood of the CMS finding this out is?

HoneyNutLoop

Your partner’s ex can’t change the address on a claim that isn’t his. It simply can’t happen. Only your ex can change the address on her claim.

HMRC already know your partner has a daughter living with her, because they are paying her child benefit. What they don’t know is the address they are both actually living at. Which means she’s not getting her letters. Which means they might already have written to her about her failure to complete a tax return, penalties, court action, etc and she doesn’t know because it’s going to the wrong address.

I think delaying contacting them is the wrong call, but it’s your life.

sheramber

It is not the Child Benefit Office who tell you how much the charge is .They do not know anybody's income.
IT IS HMRC that you need to contact.

HMRC have only recently been able to share the Child Benefit Office information and are currently working through these cases.

You can read many posts elsewhere on the forum from people who have been contacted with large bills.

Interest is payable on all overdue tax payments from the date it is due until payment is made so the longer you delay the more interest will be chargeable.

There is also the potential of penalty charges for not notifyIng HMRC.

It may be possible to arrange a payment plan with HMRC but that will depend on your partner's personal circumstances.

However, the longer you delay the more you could have you pay.

HoneyNutLoop

HMRC administer Child Benefit...

Wrighty1977

Thank you HoneyNutLoop, your responses have been helpful and a lot more sensible than others. My partner is adamant that she didn’t change the address and so is her ex. It’s too much of a coincidence that he moved out in August 2013 and their daughters address changed in September 2013. Maybe when he moved out he didn’t tell the child maintenance service that his daughter didn’t move with him. This would stop the maintenance he was paying to an ex from going up.

HoneyNutLoop

Perhaps your partner can submit a Right of Access request regarding her child benefit claim, if she’s adamant she doesn’t want to call them to find out what actually happened. Hopefully the records should contain some indication of how the address came to change.