Tax Credits Overpayment issues 7 months later.....

mummyofboys1985 · 10 February 2018 at 7:57AM

I’m STILL having problems with them taking 50% off my current claim for overpayments included in my bankruptcy!!

This has been going on since July. I was eventually advised to put in a “financial hardship claim” in November which stopped the reduction but low and behold , it’s starting back up in April :mad:

I’ve already wrote two letters of complaint and received a reply in November that just confirmed what I already knew and that the bankruptcy team would contact me in due course, heard zilcho!!

What’s my next steps? I’ve cleared any amounts on joint claims and they actually owe me money back for taking some towards my single one.

sourcrates · 11 February 2018 at 12:38PM

Was it a joint, or single claim you had ?

Because in a joint claim, if only one of you was made bankrupt, they can still recover the over payment from the other party.

If that's not the case, and its a genuine error, then your options for contact are limited, i would say try ringing the help line and get the agent to pass your details to the bankruptcy team again.

But you are correct that any tax credits over payment will cease to be recoverable from the date a person enters bankruptcy.

debt_doctor · 11 February 2018 at 10:39PM

If your formal complaint has not been dealt with then you need to move to the next step, which is here:

https://www.gov.uk/tax-credits-appeals-complaints/complaints

DD

mummyofboys1985 · 21 February 2018 at 2:56PM

Thanks ,

The overpayments were on single claims and joint claims but they put the amounts into one amount and now keep referring to the full amount as !!!8220;joint!!!8221; when it!!!8217;s not!!

We have paid the amount owed for joint overpayments and it!!!8217;s only the single amounts left but they keep saying joint joint joint grrrrrrrrr.

They!!!8217;ve just sent a letter saying my partner is liable as we have a joint claim.

I!!!8217;m losing the will to live

National_Debtline · 21 February 2018 at 4:23PM

Hi there,

I understand this must be a very frustrating situation and the complaint route is definitely something that is available to you. Try and gather as much evidence as you can regarding dates, and paperwork confirming what you were paying. If you received an acknowledgement of your complaint from November but no reply, you should look to escalate the complaint within the HMRC.

Please be aware that there are some circumstances where the continued deduction could be possible. One would be that if the overpayment is deemed to be fraudulent, then I am afraid, it is an excluded debt from bankruptcy.

The other issue (which is a bit confusing) is that you say you repaid a joint overpayment in full, which means that only a sole one outstanding and therefore no further recovery should be taken after the bankruptcy. It would help if you have something in writing from HMRC confirming a joint overpayment has been cleared in full and then (at a later date) a sole overpayment occurred. If you can clearly show this there can be no confusion of what you paid.

However, if a sole and joint overpayment were both outstanding at the same time, there is no guarantee which account your payments were allocated to. In other words, you may have thought you were paying back a joint overpayment but it was actually clearing a sole debt. If this is the case, and your partner isn't bankrupt then the HMRC could continue to take deductions from your ongoing joint award because your partner is still liable.

Laura
@natdebtline

mummyofboys1985 · 22 February 2018 at 12:18PM

This is the issue though.

They put all outstanding amounts together. So I had 3 amounts 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13. These form part of my bankruptcy. Then 2013-14 2015-16 & 2016-17. The deductions made between May - November last year clear all the joint overpayments from 2013 onwards. However they now say they are collecting a joint overpayments for 2016-2017 for over £2700 but it!!!8217;s actually my single amounts from 2010 - 2013.

It!!!8217;s just a mess and they can!!!8217;t seem to work out what they have done!

I do have my suspicions that they are going to say payments deducted between May - July 13th when I was made bankrupt, have been used to pay part of single amounts and I will still owe something !!!55357;!!!56873;

Pricivius · 22 February 2018 at 2:33PM

My understanding of repaying a group of overpayments is that the repayments are not allocated to each separate overpayment in turn or at random - they just pay down the overall sum. Therefore, how do you know that the payments you have already made were specifically allocated to the joint overpayments, rather than your earlier single overpayments?

mummyofboys1985 · 22 February 2018 at 5:56PM

I don!!!8217;t know that for sure but they should have been, at least from 13 th July.

That is what!!!8217;s happening, however the overall sum is wrongly being classed as a joint overpayments when it!!!8217;s not.

Tax Credits Overpayment issues 7 months later.....

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