HMRC mistakenly believe I live abroad

[cherrypiesally]

HMRC have sent me a letter telling me they are stopping my child benefit as they believe I moved abroad 18months ago and didn’t return to the UK. I did go away on the date in question and did return and have since been abroad 4 times, (on a renewed passport though). For some reason border control have not recorded it.

Has anyone else had this problem and how did they solve it.
I don’t have the return plane ticket as I was a staff member on a school trip and it was booked through a school trip company so don’t have any emails or credit card receipts of booking the flight. Also I probably just threw the ticket away. Short of getting 50 teens to write me a note to say I was on the flight I’m not sure what to do.

As much as I hate to see people in the same position as me at least this as opened up the conversation. Hope everyone is getting resolution on this. Off to phone HMRC now as I haven’t heard anything since I sent my paperwork in.

Well some are pleasant, helpful, that’s very debatable

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/cost-of-living/hmrc-blocking-uk-household-benefits-32763030

More from the Guardian this morning.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/31/woman-flight-italy-did-not-board-child-benefits-stopped

They really aren’t letting go of this. This story focuses on a woman and family who never even left the UK!

I rang the HMRC for the third time today and it proved third time lucky.
They asked me the following questions:
Are you resident in the UK?
Are you employed in the UK?
Was your absence from the UK less than 8 weeks?
I answered yes to all questions and was told they had reinstated my child benefit.
So finally a good outcome, but I've been very stressed about this.

Looks like the Guardian are on it!

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/01/hmrc-likely-to-have-breached-privacy-laws-in-stopping-child-benefit-experts

Be interesting to see where this goes.

If the Home Office had access to actual booking data as collected by the airline, and that alone, not API, then I suspect some tough questions might need answering.

If OTOH it's the data provided by customers via API that is the issue it's always been as clear as night follows day, both in the supporting legislation and (usually) when filling the form in, that the info provided went outside the airline to government agencies....

The real scandal (to my mind) would be if API alone was being used by officials as proof of outbound travel...it should be blindingly obvious it does no such thing and maybe that's the sort of abuse and misuse of data that might be being looked at.

I have no real objection to HMRC accessing flight data. They should be making sure that people resident in UK for more than x number of days are paying their rightful share of tax and looking at flights in and out is a good first step towards establishing this. Equally they should be making sure that child benefit is not being claimed for children who are resident abroad.

What I really object to is their cutting off child benefit from vulnerable families before giving them a chance to respond, doing this without due diligence cross checking with income tax receipts and continuing to do this after it became blindingly obvious that the data sets were flawed. They will have known how much stress and anxiety that would have caused often to some of the weakest members of our society.

I am pretty sure that the driver would have been an arbitary performance metric and I would be asking serious questions as to whether HMRC team leaders and staff benefitted financially from this in any way eg promotions, bonuses, team bonuses etc.

This is a big problem at the moment - there is a story in the Guardian about it. Lots of people in NI who go on holiday leaving from Belfast but returning via Dublin hit by it.

www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/28/hmrc-cuts-child-benefit-for-35000-families-based-on-incomplete-travel-data

Most countries your passport gets stamped on entry and exit. Nothing to do with visas.

Not any country which lets you use electronic gates - not Australia and NZ for example (both of which let UK residents scan their passports). You don’t even speak to an immigration official on entry or exit, far less get a stamp.

If you look at my passport (up for renewal next year), I’ve left the country twice and never returned.

I actually go abroad every year and I’m posting this from the UK.

I had a similar issue a few years back but it was the children they said weren’t in the UK. The proof they wanted was a letter from DC’s school to say she attended however she was in nursery as not if school age and proof from them wasn’t acceptable due to not being compulsory. The other proof accepted was a letter from their dr but the receptionist at the surgery said they didn’t provide those letters. At the time I’d just split up with DC’s dad and needed to apply for benefits as he was refusing to let me access any money and we had only the clothes on our backs but because my child benefit had been stopped I wasn’t able to apply for anything other than single persons job seekers allowance and couldn’t look for housing. This was days before Christmas too when everything would be closing on and off over the period. I still remember the stress. I eventually got a letter from the dr after I turned up at the surgery rather than phoning and was in tears of frustration at the reception desk when a dr intervened and asked what was wrong. 2 minutes after explaining I left with the letter. The knock on effect of CB being stoppped can be massive

I’m always bemused by the number of people who don’t seem to understand what the word ‘most’ means.

That's not true. A UK passport is not stamped for travel to any EU countries nor for any other countries with visa waiver or digital visas. The OP had been on a school trip, and for obvious practical reasons most school trips from the UK are to EU countries. Only a long haul flight might result in a stamped passport, and even then, many of the most popular destinations for UK citizens don't stamp UK passports.

It's absolutely to do with visas - the only reason a passport is stamped is if a visa is required for the nationality of the passport should the individual stay longer than a predetermined time, and there is no digital option.

Guardian are reporting about this. They are running other stories but this is the one I read - the family never actually even left the uk in this case. It’s a general ‘crackdown’ but seems they have interpreted data badly
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/31/woman-flight-italy-did-not-board-child-benefits-stopped

On that note my child benefit hasn’t gone in to my account as expected. Would they stop it before even sending the letter? (I’m pretty sure they did last time Tbf) what was the time scale for yours OP?

This has been in the news recently. Huge crackdown and they’re getting it wrong with lots of people

Me too - so many people using it to mean ‘almost none’.

I’ve just returned to the UK from an EU country and my UK passport was stamped.

I think the takeaway is, do not assume a passport will or will not be stamped, that alone is not proof of anything!

What do you mean? My passport has been stamped in every EU country I’ve been to.

But there's more to the world than the EU and it's a matter of fact that a lot of countries don't stamp passports, either inbound or outbound...

Given the increading use of e-gates and similar I suspect there's even less stamping of passports going to happen in the future.

As an aside I do know from time living overseas but travelling to/from the UK a lot that when it suits them HMRC can be remarkably reluctant to accept evidence that you were in or out of the UK.

A couple of stamps or bits of paper (e.g. boarding cards) often won't be enough...you need a whole paper trail of evidence...fair enough if you are not claiming to be resident and so are ready for the inquisition and so have kept detailed records/receipts for purchases around days of travel etc.

IMO it's a bit extreme getting UK resident holidaymakers to start jumping through the same hoops, especially several months after travelling when their paperwork has probably gone in the bin.

Oh look, HMRC caught up in more personal data mismanagement.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/nov/03/consumer-champions-hmrc-refund-tax-repayment-fraud

BBC article today:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cge5nl4qxdno

I phoned them this morning on the back of the BBC article, as it states they are changing process and now cross referencing with PAYE data. So I said I was one if the falsely accused persons and could they please cross reference. They were very apologetic and did check for me and said they could see I was paying tax every month. Then asked when I had returned from my trip and if I was resident in the UK. And that was enough for them to close the case.
So if you are employed and pay tax, phone them and it should be sorted in minutes.

That was despite his passport being stamped on leaving Cyprus and scanned on return to Britain.

And that BBC story highlights why the stamps in themselves can be almost useless as evidence.

The HMRC line initially could well have been:"well the stamps might show you left Cyprus but they don't show where you were going to.."....

And of course (well certainly last time I went through UK Border inbound) if you are a UK passport holder you get no receipt or stamp, regardless of whether it's an e-gate or you are manually processed...