tax credits claim overpayment is due.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

had a letter Monday from tax credits stating you owe us £197.00
please phone to make arrangements to pay.


I'm pretty meticulous in noting on the tax credits award notice to looking in the overpayments section to see if there is an overpayment somewhere and there is none on the award letter.


my wife called them to ask when how and why no contact until now.


they say its an overpayment from june 2007, because you notified us of a change in circumstances.


my wife asked how come your only notifying me now of this overpayment, they claim numerous calls ter her still existing mobile number went unanswered, letters were repeatedly sent throughout the year that were unanswered. We received nothing, and no phone calls either, my wife phone is always on, and she checks all her answerphone messages, our address hasn't changed or the mobile number its odd we received every letter from HMRC last year but they claim they sent numerous ones out to us that we never received that just so happens to be requests for payment.
I think this is a bluff theyre pulling about that aspect.


I have award letters from 2008-2009 onwards, and it has no overpayments on it.


I recall me and the wife temporarily split up in 2007 briefly for about 4 weeks, then got back together, and again they were notified of the change promptly when we decided to get back together.


the odd thing about this is that from 2004 until 2010 I was the main claimant of tax credits in the house hold not my wife so if there was an overpayment it should have been addressed to myself not my wife, if there is an overpayment it would be present in the award notice of 2008-2009 onwards and that I would have made sure it was paid back.


my wife has not agree'd to pay this back with tax credits, we requested they send us proof of the overpayment, proof they tried contacting us, and my wife also said that surely now this is statute barred anyway which they told her they are exempt from that legislation as its money owed to the HMRC.


im not sure how to approach this and advice greatly appreciated and yet await the records they say they are going to send us, but as far as I see it there must be an error on their part somewhere along the lines.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

blondebubbles wrote: »

Have you established if the overpayment has been from a joint claim or a single claim?

I claimed for my wife and kids.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

during that period, I called the HMRC, notified them of the change.
my wife (then partnered not married)didn't make a claim as we were talking through our problems, I don't recall any payments during that period, as I was working at the time and giving her money for kids. on the weekend we got back together I called HMRC on the Monday and notified them were together again and payments resumed the following week.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

blondebubbles wrote: »

So that sounds like it is from your old joint claim, that will be why it isn't mentioned on your awards from when you got back together.

The debt isn't carried forward onto new claims, only claims that run continuously.

Tax credits are not time barred. The only difference after a number of years (6 I think) is that they cannot take it to court.

I cant remember receiving a new award notice, and I cant find any of my award notices from 2004-2007 which is frustrating.


looking at 2009 award notices, when I made more changes to WTC as I lost my job in 2009 due to my illnesses I had a new award notice and read almost like a continuation of the previous award for except for WTC was removed and CTC recalculated to reflect payments already made e.g


changes you told us about:


money already paid to you:


money still outstanding in this award period:


overpayments made by us during this period:


even so I didn't make a new claim as such to tax credits in 2007, I simply called to say we split up and called back to say were back together 4 weeks later I never had to give them any details about my wife kids income again as to make a new claim.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

so after the request for documents asking for proof of over payment and asking for the letters they supposedly sent out requesting payment of the overpayment they only sent out the proof of overpayment that dated 2007.


the proof of overpayment states we were over paid £475.00


after phoning and spending nearly 2 hours on the phone asking for proof they sent out letters asking for payment before the first letter we received on the 16th of this month, they cannot provide these to us.


I found letters on my end stating there was a £475,00 overpayment in april-july period of 2007 which matches this letter, which was paid back and have bank statements from where over a course of 7 months I set up a payment plan and paid it off so I plan to send this off as It clearly shows this was paid, why they now claim there still
£197.00 left to pay of this I do not know but its paid as far as I can prove and see, but the phone call yesterday to them I couldn't get this across to them as they were adamant it is to paid or else they would deduct it from money still to paid to us in this remaining tax credit award.


im sending copies of this to them this morning via mail and hope they drop this, theres clearly some error along the lines on their half.