IN DEPTH: Erroneous Use Of Outdated HMRC Data Inflates ‘Fictitious’ Child Maintenance Figures

File photo dated 18/12/2014 of the Department for Work & Pensions office in London. John Stillwell/PA Wire

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) could be demanding money from paying parents without due process, according to evidence seen by the Epoch Times.

Responsible for managing all child maintenance payments in the UK, the CMS, which forms part of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), has previously faced criticism for its assessment methods.

New evidence centres on the CMS’s handling of income assessments and Current Income Checks (CICs), which evaluate the paying parent’s income for the previous month, in order to determine the appropriate level of child support payment they must make. Correspondence seen by The Epoch Times suggests that the CMS has routinely disregarded proper procedure.

CICs are carried out using the DWP’s Real Time Information (RTI) system, which displays an individual’s income in real-time and is also used for Universal Credit checks.

Documents presented to The Epoch Times by paying parents indicate that the CMS regularly demands payments based on outdated salaries, despite submissions from the paying parents showing changed financial circumstances.

Suicides Linked To ‘Fictitious’ Arrears

Noel Willcox, a political candidate for Reform UK and a campaigner for the rights of mistreated paying parents, claimed that despite paying what was requested, parents often found themselves burdened with thousands in, as he termed it, “fictitious” arrears.

Speaking to The Epoch Times, he said, “Paying parents are saying that there are many suicides linked to the Child Maintenance Service judgments … The financial hardship is causing anguish amongst paying parents and these calculations have resulted in paying parents taking their own lives.”

He added: “Alarmingly, since I have been talking about the CMS publicly, and exposing what I believe to be unlawful operations, many paying parents are telling the same story: that they are paying everything asked but yet according to the CMS, still owe thousands of pounds of arrears. Which parents are understandably calling fictitious.”

Paying parents who are self-employed have also claimed that the CMS erroneously maintains it can use an HMRC tax year from any of the past six years for child maintenance calculations, leading to inflated figures.

A 2016 case revealed discrepancies where HMRC data from 2008/2009 was used by the CMS to determine a paying parent’s arrears on a much lower salary in 2013/2014.

A first-tier Tribunal, misled by the CMS’s interpretation of regulations, wrongly upheld the use of a single HMRC figure. The Upper-Tier Tribunal found this interpretation flawed, stating multiple HMRC requests are permissible for accurate calculations, exposing errors made by the CMS in implementing the law.

Following this ruling, regulations were updated to reflect the outcome of the 2016 ruling, to ensure the CMS obtained accurate figures from paying parents.

CICs Carried Out Without Proper Time Limit

At the same time, the CMS appears to have continued carrying out CICs without allowing a full tax year to pass, a practice that may violate its own internal regulations.

In one set of documents seen by The Epoch Times, a self-employed paying parent hadn’t filed their tax assessment when the CMS contacted them to assess their income, two months before their annual assessment was due. According to the updated regulations, parents should be permitted to send in a self-assessment of their current earnings. However, the CMS appears to have bypassed this step and immediately undertaken a CIC.

Information collected by the RTI system to gauge their monthly income seems to have been used to inflate the total of their annual earnings, as the amount demanded was not accurate.

The paying parent was not given the opportunity to submit a self-assessment within the 12 months of the current tax year, as regulations demand.

The updated collection method is meant to represent a departure from the approach employed by its predecessor, the Child Support Agency (CSA).

Historically the CSA’s approach relied on net weekly income and direct parental input; post-2012 CMS guidelines mandate that a new full tax year must pass before a CIC may be carried out. The policy is intended to ensure that the agency gets a clear picture of the paying parent’s financial circumstances, in order to levy a fair amount of child support payment.

In child support calculations, the CMS typically obtains financial information concerning the latest full tax year directly from HMRC, sparing the need to request it directly from the non-resident parent.

However, the CMS uses the non-resident parent’s historical income, not the current one. If there is a significant 25 percent or more difference between a paying parent’s current income and HMRC’s historical figure, it must be reported to the CMS for a recalculation.

Mr. Willcox also called for an investigation into the way CICs are carried out, suggesting a potential correlation with alleged financial miscalculations. These miscalculations, he maintained, “could certainly fall in line with the policy of [flawed] ‘current income checks’.”

Stressing the urgency of investigating continuous miscalculations in CMS assessments, Mr. Willcox reiterated the ability of miscalculations to cause unnecessary financial burden.

“This is a classic example of the government allowing the civil service to run without checks and balances, disrupting people’s lives unnecessarily and causing financial hardship as a result,” he said.

Concerning Mortality Rates Among Paying Parents

According to peer-reviewed data compiled by Brian Hudson, a businessman and campaigner for the rights of paying parents, figures on the mortality of paying parents from sources including the CMS itself, the DWP, and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveal a concerning pattern among those in arrears with the CMS.

The data, obtained via multiple Freedom of Information Requests (FOI), indicates that parents in arrears have a mortality rate a staggering 14.28 times higher than the national average, constituting a profoundly elevated risk of death among paying parents. This group constitutes a significant 65.1 percent of all deaths within this demographic, despite representing only 12.3 percent of the total population.

An overwhelming 93.1 percent of deaths surpassing the national mortality rate (referred to as excess or unexplained deaths) among paying parents occurred in individuals who were in arrears in the month leading up to their passing. According to many paying parents who have spoken to The Epoch Times, this data trend may well illustrate the severe mental impact of CMS arrears collection.

Multiple publicised instances of suicides due to pressure from the CMS were also raised by Debbie Abrahams, a Labour MP, at oral hearings during a meeting of the Work and Pensions Committee in January.

Digging into the data, Mr. Hudson also underscored an anomaly within the trend of excess deaths, revealing a higher rate of mortality among female-paying parents than their male counterparts.

Female Mortality ‘Even Higher’

“The excess death rate of paying parent females is even higher than the excess death rate of their male counterparts, despite the fact that nationally the death rate of women is expected to be lower than men,” he said.

Speaking to The Epoch Times in detail about the data set, Mr. Hudson warned that “more mums are dying through their connection to the CMS than are being killed in partner violence nationally.”

Mr. Hudson has repeatedly called for light to be shined on how many suicides are reported at the inquests of deceased paying parents. Speaking to the possibility of many of these cases being linked to suicide, he said:

“Look at how much attention partner violence deaths lead to, but no attention to deaths linked to the CMS… if the CMS were not a causal factor in the suicides of paying parents, then the suicide rate of women versus men would mirror the 1:3 ratio we have nationally but its virtually identical.”

Assessing the CMS’s response to these correlations, Mr. Hudson expressed that he found it to be lacking, especially as, in his view, it fails to take into account the fact that receiving parents are not dying at the same rate: “The common retort from CMS is that family or relationship breakdown is the cause… [however], receiving parents have been through the exact same relationship breakdowns that the paying parents have, yet their death rate is 2 percent lower than expected.”

Mr. Hudson’s comprehensive research, seen previously by The Epoch Times, covers a 34-month period from September 2017 to June 2020.

In addition to this latest in a long history of criticism for its assessment methods, the CMS has also come under fire previously for its alleged lack of accountability and oversight. These criticisms centre on its overarching fiscal powers, which preclude the need for any investigation of official workings out, when enforcing the payment amounts they calculate. New powers obtained by the CMS in July enable the department to issue administrative liability orders against individuals in arrears for unpaid child maintenance, without needing to apply to a court.

Erroneous 1,250 Percent Inflation Of Arrears

Evidence presented by paying parents to The Epoch Times suggests that CMS assessments may have been artificially inflated by as much as 1,250 percent, leading to inaccurate arrears calculations. This, combined with poor oversight both by collection agencies and by the CMS itself, often forces financially strained parents into bearing the brunt of inflated calculations.

According to campaigners, situations like these considerably worsen mental health outcomes.

These concerns of oversight from the CMS highlight potential impacts, both on paying parents, and on the well-being of children affected by this system, who face an increased risk of parental suicide. According to a 2021 meta-analysis of reports on suicide, children affected by parental suicide face a threefold higher risk of succumbing to suicide themselves, while being twice as likely to attempt suicide, compared to those with both parents alive.

Both chief Labour whip Sir Alan Campbell and former Tory minister Ann Widdecome are among the politicians currently calling for a thorough public enquiry into the CMS, as concerns mount over the potential impact of miscalculations.

The DWP responded to a request for comment by saying that they would need more details on the individual cases in order to formulate a response. As these cases were received anonymously, it has not been possible to pass the data on to them.

The DWP has not responded to a request for further comment.