Closed petition Overhaul the Child Maintenance Legislation to End the Practise of Job Hopping to Avoid Payment of Child Maintenance

Closed on 8 August 2012

Many absent fathers are able to exploit loopholes in the law to avoid payment of child maintenance. If they do not inform the CSA when they begin employment, the CSA are not able to backdate an assessment to the date that the employment began. They also have no powers to force payment of child maintenance if the absent parent leaves their employment before the assessment is complete. I would like the CSA to be able to use similar processes to those employed by HMRC in the calculation of liability for unpaid income tax - being able to use employers' tax returns to identify when child maintenance has been avoided and to use those returns to calculate the amount of child maintenance avoided and then recover that unpaid maintenance. The non-payment of child maintenance avoided in this manner should be considered a criminal offence, just as the avoidance of payment of income tax is.