I work for Tax Credits

irs101

I'm not sure there's any requirement as long as all the information you've given them is full and correct. However personally I would tell them. Given that it is obvious to you that they've made a mistake it will be worked out at renewals time and you'll have to pay it back.

Incidentally, what aspect of your circumstances has changed to make it that you are not entitled? I'm not aware that you are able to tell them about future changes of circumstances on the claim form - apart from when children get too old, which they calculate automatically from the DoB.

irs

Bossyboots

I'm not sure there's any requirement as long as all the information you've given them is full and correct. However personally I would tell them. Given that it is obvious to you that they've made a mistake it will be worked out at renewals time and you'll have to pay it back.

Incidentally, what aspect of your circumstances has changed to make it that you are not entitled? I'm not aware that you are able to tell them about future changes of circumstances on the claim form - apart from when children get too old, which they calculate automatically from the DoB.

irs

Thats my problem exactly.   My daughter is now too old and I had assumed the system would pick up her date of birth and stop the payments automatically.  It hasn't.  I have now received five payments since the date the payments were due to stop.

I have no problem with paying it back. It is their mistake but I know I am not entitled to the money and I would not dream of trying to keep it but with all the stories about difficulties people have had I thought it might be easier to wait until they ask, in expectation that they will send a slip of some sort to return the payment with, thus making it more traceable. Alternatively I would return it by cheque with a copy of their letter.

irs101

How old is your daughter? There are two age cut-offs 16 and then 19 for those that continue in full-time education.

I can't remember what the computer assumes at 16 - whether it assumes they continue in full-time education and carries on paying unless you tell them otherwise or whether you have to tell them that they are continuing in FT education.

Do you have an ongoing entitlement to WTC? That could be another reason why payments are continuing.

Or do you have other children?

I could work what they've done if I had all your work & income information, which I'm happy to , but it may easier just to phone up IR and ask.

irs

scouselass

IRS101, the information you are posting here is really helpful and I wanted to ask you about the appeals process, and whether I have understood correctly how it operates.

I too, like others, was overpaid tax credits and having kept IR upto date with changes during the year I assumed this had been done correctly. Therefore I was surprised that an overpayment occurred. I kept copies of documents, names of staff I spoke to when I informed them of changes etc, and as they did adjust the payments during the year, I did assume the new payment was accurate, but it appears that wasn't the case. I did not receive an initial decision from IR about the overpayment, my current payments were simply lowered. Approx a 6 wks after the payments were lowered (at the bank) I received 4 different letters stating I was overpaid, all with different amounts. This simply added to my confusion, however it transpires they are taking the highest amount!

I sent in my appeal originally last June, and that went missing so everything was sent in again in November by registered post and IR have this, but to date no decision has been made. So to my questions

1. Have I understood correctly that I cannot appeal against the actual IR decision, only whether they should recover the overpayment?

2. If that is correct, how does that work when recovery has already been instigated by IR by lowering my current Tax Credit payments? ie if the appeal is successful will these be refunded? Or does it weaken the case that recovery has already occurred (this is likely to be the case, if the appeals process is a long way off)?

3. Does the IR have any guidelines or time boundaries over the progress of appeals?

4. Is it relevant that I have letters from IR that contain errors, ie regarding the overpayment amounts. From what I have read I have seen something about the IR making errors, but it wasn't clear to me that this meant the overpayment would not be recovered.

5. If it transpires that IR did make errors in processing the information I gave them, is that relevant to my case and the appeal?

6. Any advice or guidance that you can offer regarding the appeals process would be very helpful.

7. It it worth lodging a complaint with regards the IR's failure to make a decision to date?

Finally, I am clear that I gave IR correct information each step of the way, and have the evidence to substantiate this. I am also clear that I believed the payments were correct, as they made adjustments to the payments along the way. What I am not clear about is that even if my facts are accepted to be true, that it means I don't/or shouldn't be paying back this overpayment. I haven't read any details anywhere that makes this crystal clear.

Sorry if there is some repetition here, thanks (in anticipation) of your response

irs101

I'm afraid I'm not an expert on the appeals process - I don't work for IR, so have no idea about what their current practices are. I'm not even entitled to any tax credits

However, you first need to find out what has caused the overpayment. Is it them not processing one of the changes in circumstance that you have told them about? Or has it arisen because of your final income for 03/04?

When you say you kept your information up to date, does that include giving them updated estimates of your annual income through the year? It's not compulsory and most people don't, but it does mean that overpayments will occur and they are completely legitimate (they will always collect these).

Sorry if you know this already, but with all the publicity around the mistakes IR have made, I'm not sure that people in general realise the overpayments are a feature of the system and only a few of them are due to Official Error.

But if it turns out that the overpayment is due to an error on their part, from what you have said you'd have a very strong case. I assume you've read the IR Code of Practice 26?

irs

sshaw99

Hi, Tax credit
I know that we have been overpaid by quite a large amount because my husband was initially unemployed last year and then changed jobs a few times and we also had childcare which changed too.
What I want to know is whether we are going to be expected to pay back a large chunk in one go or will they accept smaller monthly payments??
Thanks

Fran

Hi sshaw,

You should be able to pay back in installments - over a year I think, though not sure if it's up until end of tax year or a year in time. Why not ring Tax Credits to check and also to confirm the amount (I assume you're not disputing that though?)

Jazzycat

last year we sent in an amendment to my wife's income details. She was not working and then took a part time job - it didn't affect our tax credit situation.

However it was when the system was just settling down after the horendous introduction period. Rather than adjusting it overpaid a tax credit of about £7k into our bank. We contacted the tax department and they said a letter would come out stating how to pay the amount back. We had loads of very contradicting information so we spoke in person to someone there. They went into our file and said that they could not actually ask for the money back as it was their error. We could if we wanted keep the money or return it - if we kept it we would not recieve any further tax credits until the overpayment had been recovered.

We took keep the cash option as we needed a new car and this was really an interest free loan.

I think that if its the tax depts error then you have a fair amount of control over the situation.

Good luck.

Spendless

irs101 wrote:

Spendless

On the whole, that is true. But there is no specific threshold at which nobody gets more than £545 - it's just that as the maths works out at moment, a typical family (three kids or less, no disability, no childcare element) can't get more than the family element once they have an income of £25,000 or more. The table you've refered to previously shows the figures for these typical families.

However there are a significant minority who get more than £545 at higher incomes. And families with substantial amounts of childcare can get help with the costs to much higher income levels - up to £42,500-ish for a family with 2 kids and childcare costs of £200pw.

irs

Bump - for another member.