CCM11490 - End of Year Issues: S18 - Interaction with enquiries under S19

If you have closed your examination (whether or not on the basis that you have obtained all the information you needed for your purposes), you will still be able to enquire into the claimant’s entitlement to tax credits, and the amount of their award, for the year under S19. The action you have already taken as part of your examination will not prejudice your right to enquire into the award. But the S18(10) notice might impact on the amount of time you will have to open an enquiry.

You will only have one opportunity to make a formal enquiry into the award after the end of the year. So your enquiry will have to cover not only any risks you consider you were not able to address fully as part of your examination, but also any that subsequently come to light and are worthy of enquiry. For this reason, it will not be appropriate to convert an examination into an enquiry, as to do so will risk bypassing the vital step of risk assessment and review by the CCRO.

Wherever you consider that you had to make your S18 decision before you had a proper understanding of all the relevant facts for the year, you should set the PSE signal, using value PSE 09, to indicate as much to the CCRO when they carry out their review.

You should never close an in – year examination and immediately open an enquiry to continue, in effect, with the examination. Identification of cases for enquiry is the responsibility of the CCRO, who will take account in making their decision of all the information they have, including what happened during any earlier examination.