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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Lisa O’Carroll and Luke Butterly

HMRC cuts child benefit for 23,500 families based on incomplete travel data

HM Revenue and Customs sign in Whitehall.
A new HMRC system used incomplete travel data at airports and ports and flagged up residents in the UK as suspected emigrants. Photograph: Robert Evans/Alamy

Parents who went from Liverpool to Amsterdam with their autistic children are among thousands who have had their child benefit wrongly stopped as part of a crackdown on benefit fraud, it has emerged.

The error by HM Revenue and Customs emerged 48 hours after the Guardian and the Detail reported on hundreds of families in Northern Ireland who had child benefit stopped after they returned home from holiday via Dublin airport, leaving HMRC with the impression they had taken a one-way ticket out of the country and were fraudulently collecting child benefit.

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