Guidance

Eat Out to Help Out Scheme: receiving payments you were not entitled to – CC/FS58

Updated 21 March 2022

This factsheet contains information about the recovery of overclaimed Eat Out to Help Out payments. It also tells you about the penalties we can charge.

An overclaimed Eat Out to Help Out payment includes any amount of a payment which you were not entitled to receive.

When we talk about ‘you’ in the factsheet, this means the business that registered to take part in Eat Out to Help Out.

If you need help

If you have any health or personal circumstances that may make it difficult for you to deal with us, please tell the officer who has contacted you. We’ll help you in whatever way we can. For more information, go to www.gov.uk/get-help-hmrc-extra-support.

You can also ask someone else to deal with us on your behalf, for example, a professional adviser, friend or relative. We may however still need to talk or write to you directly about some things. If we need to write to you, we’ll send a copy to the person you’ve asked us to deal with. If we need to talk to you, they can be with you when we do, if you prefer.

Paying back amounts you’ve overclaimed

We understand that mistakes can happen, particularly given recent circumstances. We’ve made it as easy as possible to pay back any amounts of Eat Out to Help Out payments you’ve claimed that you were not entitled to.

If you received too much because you made an error in a claim, you must pay this back to us.

To find out how you can notify HMRC, go to www.gov.uk and search for ‘repay Eat Out to Help Out’.

Recovering overclaimed amounts

Under the new legislation, we can recover amounts of Eat Out to Help Out payments you’ve overclaimed. We’ll look for incorrect claims and take action to put them right. By paying back any amounts you were not entitled to, you can avoid any tax liability for overclaimed Eat Out to Help Out payments.

Our priorities are supporting our customers and tackling deliberate non-compliance and criminal attacks. We will not be actively looking for innocent errors in our compliance approach. We’ll assess overclaims and charge penalties to support these priorities.

Assessing the Income Tax charge

To recover overclaimed payments, we can make an Income Tax assessment. We’ll assess the amount that you were not entitled to and have not already repaid. If we make an assessment, we’ll write to you about it.

The assessment includes any amounts you’ve overclaimed that you were not entitled to under the Eat Out to Help Out rules.

You must pay any amount we assess within 30 days of the assessment. We’ll charge interest on any late payments. We may also charge late payment penalties if you’ve still not paid the amount 31 days after the due date.

For any overclaimed amounts:

• if you’ve repaid the amount or we’ve made an assessment before the date you submit your tax return, you do not need to include it in your return
• if you’ve not repaid the amount and we’ve not made an assessment before the date you submit your tax return, you must include details of the overclaimed amount in your return – we’ll give more guidance in the tax return notes and help sheets

By tax return we mean your appropriate Corporation Tax return or your Income Tax Self Assessment return for the tax year 2020-21.

If you know you’ve overclaimed Eat Out to Help Out amounts, do not wait until you send in your tax return to tell us because you may be liable to a penalty.

Penalty for not telling us about the Income Tax charge

We may charge you a penalty if you did not tell us within the notification period that you were liable to an Income Tax charge due to an overclaimed Eat Out to Help Out payment.

The notification period ended 90 days after you received the Eat Out to Help Out payment you’re not entitled to.

When deciding the amount of any penalty, we’ll take account of whether you knew you were not entitled to the Eat Out to Help Out payment when you received it.

If you knew you were not entitled to your payment when you received it and did not tell us in the notification period, the law treats your failure as deliberate and concealed. This means we can charge a penalty of up to 100% on the amount of the Eat Out to Help Out payment that you were not entitled to receive or keep. We’ll also take account of the other factors we normally consider when working out the amount of any penalty.

For more information about penalties, read factsheet CC/FS11a, ‘Coronavirus support payments – penalties for failure to notify’. Go to www.gov.uk and search for ‘CC/FS11a’.

Appeals

If we:

• make an assessment to recover a payment you are not entitled to or were overpaid
• charge you a penalty

we’ll write and let you know.

We’ll give you the reasons for our decision and tell you the amount of tax or penalty due.

If you do not agree with the decision or the amount due, you can appeal. The letter will tell you how. You must do this within 30 days from the date of our letter.

You can find out about appeals in factsheet HMRC1, ‘HM Revenue and Customs decisions – what you can do if you disagree’. Go to www.gov.uk and search for ‘HMRC1’.

If you’re a partnership

If a partnership receives an overclaimed Eat Out to Help Out payment which it does not repay, to collect the amount due as Income Tax we may assess:

• the relevant partner
• any of the partners

The partners will be jointly and severally liable for the amount assessed.

If the partnership does not repay the amount and we’ve not issued an assessment, one of the partners must include the Income Tax charge on their Self Assessment tax return for 2020 to 2021. The other partners will not need to self-assess the amount.

We may assess the relevant partner for the penalty we charge, but all partners are jointly and severally liable for any penalty assessed.

If a company becomes insolvent

If a company is insolvent and we cannot recover the tax it owes, company officers can become personally liable to pay the tax charged on their companies’ overclaimed Eat Out to Help Out payments.

This can happen if the company officer knew that the company had overclaimed an Eat Out to Help Out payment at the time it was received.

Publishing details of deliberate defaulters

If we charge you a deliberate penalty because of an incorrect Eat Out to Help Out payment claim, we may also consider publishing your details as a deliberate defaulter. For more information, read factsheet CC/FS13, ‘Publishing details of deliberate defaulters’. Go to www.gov.uk and search for ‘CC/FS13’.

More Information

This factsheet is one of a series. For the full list, go to www.gov.uk and search for ‘Compliance checks factsheets’.

Our privacy notice

Our privacy notice sets out the standards that you can expect from us when we ask for information or hold information about you. Go to www.gov.uk and search for ‘HMRC Privacy Notice’.

If you are not happy with our service

Tell the person or office you’ve been dealing with. They’ll try to put things right. If you are still not happy, they’ll tell you how to make a formal complaint.