Income increase of £225, IPA increase of £374!!

peachyprice

I would have though it would have to be included as a legitimate expense.

In the box marked 'Income Other sources' you should only put your OH's contribution, not her whole salary, to the household after all her own commitments/expenses have been met, one of which is her IPA, and vice versa on yours.

Rosey321

Thanks

And yes, the whole word 'contribution' makes great sense, and yes, surely it has to be included as an expense otherwise any income is always going to be calculated against twice in the case of couples which must have been the case here.

Thanks for all your help here, I feel my case getting stronger again!!

peachyprice

Happy to help Rosey, hope you get it sorted, at least you're getting closer.

dalip

i am just going to pm you;)

Rosey321

This is getting very interesting now. I'm starting to see the way the OR may have calculated all this. It looks like he might have entered our salaries into this sheet to see the percentage split of our household salary contribution and as to how any figures should be split. This came out about 61/39%.

My next experiment was to enter all our figures as if we was one person ie both our salaries together and all our outgoings combined all on one spreadsheet.
Blow me if the resultant IPA amount wasn't within a pound of the combined IPA figures that he has proposed for us. The split is then very interesting too as this is where the percentages have come into play - the 61%/39% split also seems very representative of the amounts we are being asked to pay.

So now, the question is - for this process, are we 'one person' or are we two separate cases?
Clearly, if we are only 'one person' then there's no facility to include other OH IPA payment because in the case of one individual, you would discount this factor in order to make a fresh calculation.
However, if two seperate calculations are to be made, then the facility to include OH IPA would be able to be included as a decreased household contribution.

Therefore, the ability to calculate two people as one is clearly not going to be as beneficial as calculating two seperate versions and is an unfair manoeuvre if this is the case!

Hope this makes sense! It is getting late after all....

Hmmm the plot thickens!!

blind-as-a-bat_2

you are treated as two seperate cases, you may have expendeture that is soley one or the others, and others that are joint, so you enter them as such by entering "y" in the second colum for joint expenses.

Cant remember if you have kids, but if so dont enter CB at all

peachyprice

Rosey, how did the OR work out your original IPA's, as individuals is presume, as they were both different amounts?

The trustee cannot suddenly decide they're going to do it differently, just to get more money out of you. There is a remote possibility that this is a genuine mistake and the trustee is not familiar with the way IPA's are worked out, on the other hand.......

And remember this is an agreement, if you don't agree you have the right to refuse.

Rosey321

Just had a Xmas Eve reply on my query.

They have treated our cases separately. They have sent a copy of each of our calculation sheets (which is Peachy's spreadsheet with our figures entered on).

The thing that stands out is that the 'other income' portion is the whole salary of our spouse in each case as opposed to monthly contribution of spouse that would incorporate spouse's IPA payment.

The letter states 'they cannot comment on whether the previous office calculated the figures separately or not but we can assure you that we use the same IPA calculator throughout the service'

So it all boils down to whether spouse's IPA amount should come off of spouse's monthly income contribution...

This query could run and run!!!!

fermi

Rosey321 wrote: »

The thing that stands out is that the 'other income' portion is the whole salary of our spouse in each case as opposed to monthly contribution of spouse that would incorporate spouse's IPA payment.

Well that is blatantly wrong.

What a prat of an examiner.:rolleyes:

You need to insist that the IPA calculations are reviewed by their assistant OR (manager).

Rosey321

Unfortunately, I am going to have to reluctantly give up my fight on this one I think.

After a couple of e-mails/letters back and forth, I told them that I agreed with their calculation methods, but I did not agree with the omission of IPA amounts in each other’s calculations as surely this is money that the household effectively never has. I suggested that he looked at how the IPAs were originally calculated. I received this reply:

‘Thank you for response regarding the variation of both yours and your wife’s IPAs.

Hopefully this reply will be ultimatum of your queries.

I have put your theory into question (subtracting the IPA amounts from the partners household contribution), and consulted my manager as to whether or not this should be something taken into account when couples residing at the same household originally have their IPAs assessed.

However, this theory has been proven inaccurate for the following reason:

If this was the case of a sole bankrupt on an IPA, and the bankrupt’s income was the total of your monthly take home plus the monthly take home of your partner, then the result of the re-assessment would be the same.

Once again, I hope this answer will suffice so that the variation letters can be agreed and signed’

So that’s it (feel free to try and translate the penultimate paragraph). Unless anyone has any other ideas, I think I’m going to have to concede defeat. I read it out to my wife and she was a bit scared by the word ‘ultimatum’ used early on although I don’t think the OR meant it in that sense (or did he...??). I do feel a sense of impatience in the tone of the letter though and what with not wanting my wife to worry and the general feeling that this OR office will not budge from their opinions, it might be time to just agree the thing.

It is also interesting as well, that there appears to be no comment on the previous calculation method.

It has been a frustrating process which I can’t believe is not properly documented – there must be plenty of other couples out there surely?? However, there’s nothing on the Insolvency website, I got nothing out of the BR general enquiries e-mail address (I asked them as I believe it is a general enquiry but they said they couldn’t comment as this was obviously case specific!).

It is a shame there is nothing official with which to base my arguments otherwise I could have even considered letting it run so a court would decide an IPO. However, without such official hard facts to back me up, I daren’t take the risk. I know there’s no proper difference between IPA and IPO anyway but I would feel like an IPO would label me as uncooperative which would be unfair as I have always been totally cooperative with them.