PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Children: Maintenance (14 March 2018)

The Department does not collect data on paying parents who use limited companies. The Child Maintenance Service obtains income information directly from HMRC and includes almost all sources of income declared to that Department for tax purposes. The specially trained Financial Investigation Unit (FIU) is able to look into cases where there is concern about a parent’s income. The FIU has been expanded since it was set up in 2014; and between October and December 2017 it opened over 1200 complex earner investigations. We recently consulted on a new Child Maintenance Compliance and Arrears strategy which proposed further improvements to the treatment of the income of complex earners, such as high value assets owned by a parent being used to create a notional income. Our response to the consultation will be published in due course.