Tax Credits: Codes of practice
This section gives details of HMRC Codes of Practice (COP) that are relevant for tax credits.
These are important documents issued by HMRC to say what their practice is in certain situations. They are not legally binding and can be overturned by the courts, although this has happened very rarely in practice. Below we have given details of all current codes as well as links to archived versions that are useful for dealing with older disputes and appeals.
Current Codes of Practice
Archived Codes of Practice
At present there is only one COP in use for tax credits, however it is extremely important as it sets out how HMRC deal with overpayments of tax credits.
- COP 26 (April 2013) - What happens if we have paid you too much tax credits?
You can find more information about challenging overpayments in our ‘how to deal with HMRC’ section.
The codes that appear below are no longer in use and are presented here for information purposes only. Earlier versions of COP 26 are useful when dealing with old disputes and appeals.
Previous versions of Cop 26 -
- COP 26 (March 2012)
- COP 26 (Dec 03)
- COP 26 (Aug 04)
- COP 26 (Mar 06)
- COP 26 (Apr 07)
- COP 26 (Jan 08)
- COP 26 (Feb 08)
- COP 26 (Mar 08)
- COP 26 (Jul 10)
- COP 26 (Apr 11)
Previous versions of COP 23 are no longer available:
- COP23 - Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit local office examination (2003)
Cop 23 dealt with examinations, either before tax credits were paid or during the year whilst tax credits were being paid on a provisional basis. This code of practice was replaced with leaflet WTC/FS2 in April 2005 (WTC/FS2 is available from our tax credit leaflets section).
Previous versions of COP 27 are no longer available:
- COP27 - Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit local office enquiries contents (2004)
This covered compliance enquiries and was replaced by WTC/FS1 in April 2005. (WTC/FS1 is available from our tax credit leaflets section).
Updated 12 April 2013