HMRC provides a compensation route where a technical incident prevented access to Tax-Free Childcare. Where childcare costs were paid without the expected government top-up because applying or accessing the account was impossible, a claim may cover the top-up that should have been paid.
The administration also says it considers reasonable costs directly caused by a malfunction, an error by its services or an unreasonable delay for which it is responsible. The link between the incident and the expenditure must therefore be established; a service failure does not make every childcare expense refundable.
To prepare the claim, it is useful to reconstruct the sequence of steps taken, the incident encountered and the costs actually borne. This chronology helps separate the government top-up not received from additional expenses claimed. An invoice establishes expenditure but not necessarily its cause: exchanges with the service and evidence of inability to access the account may help explain why that expenditure is linked to the malfunction.
The Tax-Free Childcare procedure uses a form to complete, print and send. It must be distinguished from the procedure for free childcare hours for working parents, which has specific conditions and supporting documents. Compensation does not remove the need to examine the initial entitlement to the scheme.