Never Knew about Child allowance

M

mcbecker

Guest
We want to know if we have any chance of applying for unpaid child allowances going back many years.
My Dutch wife and I moved to Ireland with our three young children 19 years ago. I am a US citizen as such did not have permission to work here for the first seven years. US tax system provides relief or deductions for each child in a family so we never realised that a different system operated in Ireland which, as we now know, gives an allowance for every child separate from the tax system. We just never realised that everyone with children got the child allowance and of course never applied and now our children are grown. During our time here we had some hard times when money was very short but we scraped by and we never appled for any type of assistence and if we had had the child assistence it would have really helped. Now however we are faced with a law firm/collection agency on behalf of the Revenue pursuing my wife for some taxes she owes from several years ago and with penalties and interest it is over 10,000 euros. We don't want court proceedings and with my wife not working and debt problems related to comlications getting our house 3 years ago we have no way of getting out of this without refinancing our mortgage and we are both too old to get a reasonable mortage with most lenders.

The point I want to make is that all these years the government through social welfare was not paying us and without any form of "interest" added the amount of child welfare for 3 children would total well over 20,000 euros. While the two agencies are no connnected except that they are arms of the same government does my wife have any way of realistically getting what she was entitled to and using this unpaid amount one to clear the other??

The quick answer is probably "sorry, if you didn't get any child assistence in the past, too much time has passed and you are out of luck."

We feel it is unfair or even morally wrong to have to pay the back taxes which were only about £3,500 to start with while we never got the entitlements from the other agency. Also consider even if we could apply and receive the money it would not include any interest. Newcomers in recent years were and are given full info on entitlements and surely have made use of them. 19 years ago there was not the emphasis on ensuring information on entitlements was available.

So what do we do? just applying will probably result in a quick "NO". Is there any other recourse? Thanks for anything you can suggest.
 
Looks like you're out of luck I'm afraid:
3. When should I apply?

You should apply for Child Benefit within 6 months of:
  • the month in which your child was born, or
  • the month the child became a member of your family, or
  • the month your family came to live in the Republic of Ireland.
You can get Child Benefit from the first day of the month after the child is born, becomes a member of your family, or your family begins living in the Republic of Ireland.

Note
If you do not apply in time, you will usually get Child Benefit from the first day of the month after we get your application.
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unless "usually" implies that they may have leeway to entertain backdated claims in certain circumstances. If Welfare say no to any attempt to backdate claims for CB (you might want to put such a claim in writing but stick to the issue of CB and don't go into other unrelated stuff like the tax liabilities) then you could always try your local or, ultimately, the Irish parish pump politics thing and lobby your local elected representatives about this matter to see if they can do anything.

I don't really see any link between your wife's outstanding tax liabilities and the issue of you missing out on Child Benefit.
 
The only way you are going to get an answer regarding backdating CB is to apply for it. I think you would need to have very strong and valid reasons for not claiming before this. Saying you didn't know will hardly do it as the general opinion of govt. is that it is up to everyone to find out about their entitlements, it seems. The Ombudsman will also make enquires if all offiial avenues fail and you feel unfarily treated.
 
McBecker,

I am curious as to how you could live in Ireland and never have heard of Children's Allowance / Child Benefit. It is mentioned in the Budget every year and in the newspapers and TV/radio after that.

Also, surely when you talk to friends, neighbours, relatives, etc., it must have come up in conversation at some point?
 
Seems surprising that you could go 19 years in Ireland without becoming aware of CB alright.
 
The point I want to make is that all these years the government through social welfare was not paying us
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have to agree with other posters, its not so much a case that the government were not paying you, more so that you didn't claim it. its mentioned every year in the budget so no reason as to why you would not be aware of it. In any event As far as I'm aware its not backdated. A colleague had not applied for children's allowance for her 12 year old, and was not given any back dated payments when she eventually applied for it.
 
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