£8000+ Tax Credit Overpayment?!?

dsh2010

Hi, I received a letter the other day saying our tax credits are being stopped and the reason given was that we were on a single person claim and not a joint person claim. However both me and my partner know that we got all this sorted out as we did it all when our boy was born last year. HMRC are saying that we never contacted them and the form filled in was for a single person claim! We called them from our local jobcentre as i had to change the address the jobcentre had for me and we had to inform the housing association that i had moved in aswell. We remember getting the forms and filling them in and sending them back however we sent it via normal post as it didnt cross our minds to send it recorded. So they are now saying that we have to pay back over £8000 and we cant even backdate our joint claim back to when it should of been done from. My Partner and I are both adamant that this is not our fault and we will appeal and court etc but chances are we wont win. Just wondered if this has happened to anyone else out there when its not been there fault and does anyone have any suggestions in giving us our best chances to fight this??

Thanks for you time

David

Horseunderwater

Now I assume you noticed that your joint claim award did not arrive during all this time? They would have sent you a new letter usually inside of 4 weeks. Also you should have noticed the extra that was still arriving in your bank account. So Why did you not get in touch with them back then?

shedboy94

There will be records of you phoning to query why your award notices showed you as a single person with no mention of your partner I assume?

Pedent

HMRC has produced a "What happens if we've paid you too much tax credit?" leaflet. It's at http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/leaflets/cop26.pdf.

To summarise, if an overpayment results from their mistake, and you have fulfilled all of your responsibilities, then you won't have to repay it.

However, your responsibilities include notifying HMRC promptly of any change in your circumstances, notifying HMRC if you don't receive a new award notice having notified them of a change in your circumstances, notifying HMRC if any of the details on your award notice are incorrect, and notifying HMRC if your payments don't match the amount shown on your award notice.

Presumably what went wrong here was that you didn't receive a new award notice having sent off your forms, but didn't let them know?

Icequeen99

I think you will fail in any dispute here because although you told HMRC, you had a responsibility to check award notices over the last year and they would have only showed one person on them. So even though you told them, you failed in your responsibilities to check your award notices.

All is not lost though, if you can show them that this wasn't deliberate (which should be possible from the phone call recording) you need to contact the compliance officer who made the decision and ask for something called notional offsetting.

This is where they will offset the amount you would have had on a joint claim if it had been made at teh right time against the single claim amount. It will either wipe out the overpayment or reduce it, depending on whether your partner is working etc..

IQ