Need some help £10,000 over-payment and rejected application

Icequeen99

On the one point that you asked re appeals.

You need to understand there are two processes - appeal and dispute. They are very different.

Appeals are a statutory right, set out in legislation. But you can only appeal certain decisions relating to entitlement, the decisions set out that are appealable are in the Tax Credits Act 2002 (Section 38 if you're interested). Appeals go eventually to an independent Tribunal.

Disputes are an internal process primarily. Disputes are used where there is an overpayment - the person has received more than their entitlement, but they think there are reasons they should not pay it back. HMRC decide their own disputes, if you disagree you can raise a complaint to the Adjudicator and onwards to the Ombudsman but they are only looking at whether HMRC applied their own published policy. You can read Code of Practice 26 about disputes.

So, if you have submitted a dispute, and you are not happy with the response. You can ask for them to review the original dispute decision if you can provide new evidence. If you have no new evidence, then you need to submit a complaint. There are two tiers of complaints before you get to the Adjudicator. You cannot appeal the decision to turn down the dispute.

The only right of appeal from what you have said is on the latest decision that she is not entitled - that is a decision on entitlement and if it is as a result of a new claim will be an initial decision under Section 14 TCA 2002 which does carry appeal rights. You need to get that appeal in within 30 days on a WTC/AP form.

On the non-renewal issue, there is no right of appeal. As I explained this is because a renewal does two things - finalises the year just ended and acts as a claim for the new year. If you fail to renew, there is no claim on the new year and therefore nothing to appeal.
There is no right of appeal against HMRC's decision to stop the provisional payments they make between April and when they stop them for non-renewal, because these are discretionary.

I would suggest, that recourse needs to be against the first accountant once you have established the facts. The main thing you need to establish is what date HMRC ended the payments which will be the date on the statement of account sent to the claimants and on what date they visited the accountant. If it was within 30 days of the statement of account, then you may have a case, but you need to fully investigate the facts and get some advice from someone with tax credits experience before pursuing any complaint as you don't know what he actually said to them. If their English wasn't good they might not have understand what he told them.

I think you will get no-where on the non-renewal overpayment with HMRC other than negotiating a repayment plan.

IQ