suprise letter

hedgemonkey66 wrote: »

so if it turns out they have made an error and nothing is owed, because they made no contact for 14 years, i still owe it because the appeals procedure has timed out? as i said i have no idea how i can possibly owe then this much, or anything at all. how ridiculous!!

yes pretty much that's right. If the original calculation was wrong, the only way to reverse that would be through an appeal or through statutory official error. Max appeal time limit is 13 months from date of final decision and official error is 5 years from final decision. So neither of those legal routes are open to you.

If the overpayment is correct, but you don't think you should have to repay due to a mistake on the part of HMRC, this would be a dispute for which there is now a 3 month time limit again from final notice. So you're out of time, but even if you were in time, you failed to meet your obligations by not notifying HMRC of the separation and by not checking the final award notice and in such a case they won't write off the overpayment.

It is unlikely you'll even get to the point of them even considering whether it is owed or not - as soon as they see the tax year it is related to they will just say you are out of time for the dispute and normally don't enter into any dialogue.

The last avenue you can pursue is the complaints process that leads to the Adjudicator and Parliamentary Ombudsman but they only look to see if HMRC have followed their own rules/processes which they most likely have if you try and appeal or dispute now.



IQ

hedgemonkey66 wrote: »

ok. thanks. but i can still go for the 50% payment because it was a joint claim?

yes, you should only pay 50% of the overpayment (unless your ex-partner is willing to pay more!)

IQ

konark wrote: »

Tax credits were only introduced in April 2003, you racked up a lot of overpayments quickly!

I think pretty much every claim did that year.

I'd assume it took your ex-partner months to notify tax credits about the change.