Child Tax Credit Want Money Back - How to deal

miket1964

Hi All

Received a letter and bills in April from the Child tax Credit Agency demanding the return of £4098.90 in overpayments dating from 2004.
Having just got myself debt free this year, this was a bit of shock. We haven't been in receipt of child tax credit for a couple of years.

I spoke with the National Debt Line, who suggested appealing this decision, which I did and asked HMRC to show how these overpayments came about.

The reply received from my appeal doesn’t explain but only outlines the awards we received during this time and at the end of each award period listed in the letter, states the amount that was overpaid, which adding each period together adds to the total amount due.

I have kept all the award notices we received from the start and this reply corresponds to these, but doesn't explain how they came to overpay and how this overpayment was calculated and obviously not an issue until now
The final paragraph declares that we have no appeal and the amount owed stands.

My thoughts are how is this reasonable, we declared our income, the Child Tax Agency awarded the money, we informed them when our income change etc etc. So surely the fault lies with the agency

I have spoken again today (hence this post) with the National Debt Line, who couldn't give any further advise on this matter.

So any advise from Forum members please on how to proceed.
Mike

System

Overpayments arise for a variety of reasons. In the early days of Tax credits they only allowed your household income to rise by £2500 without it affecting the amount due to you. If your income rose by more than that and there was a delay in letting the Tax Credit Office know then by the time they knew about it you would already have received too much.
Also in the early days WTC could be "paid via employer". That was a disaster because by the time TCO contacted the employer to change the amount to be paid out and then the employer actioned it in the payroll run another overpayment could arise. Changes in childcare costs and disability beneftis also affected entitlment.

You can write back to TCO and say the response you received did not adequately explain how the overpayments arose and you would prefer a more detailed explanation. I would send a copy of the first response with that letter so the person dealing with it can see what was sent out to you.

The thing is this. If you have known for several years about the overpayments did you not try to ascertain how they arose before now. It sounds as though they are only asking for the whole amount because your claim has now ceased.

If you want to negotiate time to pay after that then you can arrange that.