HMRC birth vs adoption certificates

[Nellyc1]

I've been speaking to HMRC about childcare allowance and they had no references to my daughters adoption certificate, only her birth certificate. Its meant the surnames are different and they can't proceed with the application without seeing the adoption certificate.
Has anyone else experienced this or been able to complain about it?
Thanks!

I' m not sure what the complaint is to be honest. They need evidence that its your child you are claiming for - unless I'm missing something

The complaint would be about the child services not using the adoption certificate and only keeping the birth certificate on their system. Birth certificates should be null after the adoption as gone through. Sorry, I was still het up after my call with them and prob didn’t make sense!!

What's childcare allowance?

If you earn under a certain amount of money then you are eligible for 30 hours free child care.

I’m not sure what the complaint would be either, are you able to provide them with evidence of the adoption? Which child services are you thinking of - I ask because the adoption certificate wouldn’t usually be shared as a matter of course so unless you have whoever a copy, they wouldn’t necessarily have it.

Well, yes, you have to provide evidence of adoption.

The LA will have the birth cert on file because it's part of your child's file. They were corporate parents for a while.

I was asked for the adoption order, and declined as it has more info than they needed. But asking for the adoption order is reasonable.

Are you sure re the 30 hours? I thought that was universal, and depended on your wage. You need to give proof of former lac status for the 15 hours at 2yrs, and for early years pupil premium.

I don't understand what you're raising an issue about. They need proof your child was formerly lac, this means they get funding you want them to have. So do it. I don't know how you can survive if your threshold for complaining is this low!

HMRC don't need proof of adoption, though, in terms of status. If you're applying via the tax free system, you may need to give a birth cert, but the short form would do. Why would HMRC ever have your child's original birth cert, and how have they linked the two?

Sorry, my post should say that I declined to give the adoption order (to much info), bit did give the adoptioncertificate.

This is about the 30 hours though not the 2 year hours.
Our DCs are adopted and DD got the 30 hours.
I think we had to send the long form adoption certificate to prove age/that we were parents.

I don't think we sent anything to HMRC. They just believed we had kids. But we had been claiming child benefit for them.

Possibly, we provided the birth certs for the child benefit. That would have been the original birth certs. So possibly they are still on file there. Who cares? If I cared, if have sent replacements. You can't expect HMRC to automatically know an adoption order has been made unless you inform them, and provide evidence. They're not psychic. I don't get the issue?

My experience with HMRC was that they refused to award child benefits initially when LO came who prior to the adoption order being granted. It took 6 months and an escalation up the complaints process to get it sorted as no one seemed able to say way it had been refused due to someone failing to input the relevant information on their computer system. Turned out all they need was verbal confirmation that I wasn't in receipt of foster carer's allowance for her.

Also had to send them a copy of the adoption certificate once it was granted in order to update their records.

ifchocolatewerecelery Now THAT I would complain about!