Maternity allowance reimbursement

[katem38]

I was wondering if anyone could help! I am self employed and have been wrestling with HMRC since last year to get an answer from them over a maternity allowance dispute, but noone seems to be able to have a precedent on my request.
I applied for maternity allowance last year for my 2nd child, and at the time had an outstanding tax bill. When I received the allowance verdict, it was at the lower rate of £27 per week, which stupidly in my heavily pregnant fug thought was due to my outstanding bill being deducted from the allowance.
When I followed up with them however they told me it was due to the tax bill outstanding that this verdict had been given, and so my response obviously was to find the money to pay off the bill in order to be awarded the higher rate of allowance of £145 per week. In my mind (stick with me everyone!) as I do not receive or claim a single benefit from the government, and have paid my tax bill, why should I not receive the backdated maternity discrepancy in that case? Does anyone have any experience of this and can advise? Neither my accountant, citizens advice or hmrc themselves have been able to help and the latter have been incredibly rude each time I actually managed to get through to someone... does that mean I'm onto something?!

What has the tax bill got to do with it? MA goes on NI contributions

If you can get all your paperwork - including emails and dated notes from phone calls - together make an appointment with your MP. S/he has a duty to help you look into the screw ups of government departments and they normally give a proper response to MPs.

I used to work in personal tax and I found HMRC were frequently rude to me and my colleagues so I wouldn't go by that.

Surely as the Maternity Allowance is a benefit operated by the DWP there should be some involvement from them in resolving your query? As far as I am aware, HMRC only get involved because which rate you get depends on how much NI insurance contributions you have paid. Either you get the lower rate or you pay your class 2 NI contributiona and get the higher rate. In that respect, are you are you are talking about tax you owed and not National Insurance contributions?

Normally you are automatically awarded the lower rare if you are self employed as you are treated as having earned the minimum amount of £30 for 13 weeks during the test period. HMRC then contact you to ask if you want to pay Class 2 NI contributions for the period, which entitles you to the £145ish amount.

Whether you can get back the difference between the lower rate and higher rate I think would depend on how long ago the claim started as I think you have three months after the birth to claim. Also, whether this is seen as an error on their part in communicating with you or an error on your part in that you did not chase it up or failed to understand how it worked, if you see what I mean.