Video: Treasury Minister David Gauke: 'HMRC will reclaim mis-paid child benefit' The Government says that the HMRC will recover child benefit which has been wrongly been paid to parents who are not eligible for it. "The system in place is that we will recover the amount paid in child benefit through the self assessment system, the tax system, but if people want to opt out of receiving child benefit altogether, then they can do that," said Treasury Minister David Gauke. But with just days to go before changes to the system come into effect, official figures show by late afternoon on Thursday only 182,199 out of an estimated 1.1million affected have opted out of receiving child benefit.