Tax Credits Overpayment, BR and Discharge

savagevixen

Hi
I was recently posting on Brimau's thread regarding Housing Benefit and Council Tax Overpayments. Following on from that I challenged our previous council and the recovery they were trying to make since our discharge. This was successfully challenged and the amount was written off!!!
At the same time I wrote to the HM Revenues and Customs, regarding an overpayment of Tax Credits 2 years before BR. This was slowly being taken off our Working Tax Credit element at @ £4 per week, this continued throughout the period we were undischarged.
We were discharged in Sept 07, and in October our circumstances changed quite drastically (for the worse) and we no longer received the Working Tax Element, only the Child Tax Element. The Overpayment office decided to recoup £80 every 4 weeks from our CTC. I was devastated and appealed, to no avail, it was deemed appropriate. Between October 07 and March 08 they clawed back £580.
So several weeks ago, I wrote a letter that detailed my belief that since we were discharged this money had in fact been non-recoverable. I included copies of BR and proof of discharge.
I got quite a good feeling about all of this when suddenly a large payment went into my account... and then 1 week later got this

HM Revenue & Customs

Tax Credit Office
Overpayments Group

Address

Date ** July 2008
Our Ref Overpayments Group
Your Ref National Insurance No.


Dear Mr & Mrs Vixen

Your (year) tax Credits overpayment

Thankyou very much for letting us see your bankruptcy discharge notice. This shows that your bankruptcy was discharged on ** ****ember 2007.

We have calculated that £5**.** of the overpayment was still outstanding at that date. We will not be asking you to pay back this amount.

If you have any further queries please call us.

Yours sincerely,

*************

Yippee!!!!
But essentially this must be good news for Brimau, as the Tax Credits are a much bigger body than a local council and they have deemed the overpayment post discharge non-recverable. We were in receipt throughout BR so it was deducted and then post discharge, it has been written off.
Our Housing Benefit was the same.
If you are not receiving the benefit, then they cannot claw it back, and if you are discharged it is no longer recoverable.
I would imagine that this will be laughed out of court and the council will be in trouble for wasting court time.

brimau_2

:j Oh I do hope that it works out for me too. Sadly I am dealing with a right bunch of so and so's!! Well done you though :-D I am so happy for you

tigerfeet2006

Well done Vixen that's great news. I always understood if you had a payment plan set up before BR then upon discharge the debt was then cancelled. I am glad this has been proved true.