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Examinations: Information: Meaning of "Examination"
Compliance work carried out into claims and CoCs in-year are known as examinations, and are based on Section 14 (pre-award), Section 15 (Changes of Circumstances - increasing the maximum rate of entitlement) or Section 16 (post-award). Examination is not a statutory term, it is used to help HMRC staff and claimants distinguish these cases from enquiries under Section 19, which can only be made after the year-end, when the claim has been finalised.
In some cases, a joint examination and enquiry (under Sections 16 and 19) can be opened, which gives us more power to suspend payments for customers who do not reply to our queries.
All claims and Changes of Circumstances (CoCs) received will be subject to automated verification checks and, at the same time, to automated risk assessment. Identification of claims and CoCs for compliance action will be based on the automated risk assessment and on other factors, such as other information held by the department.