My tax credit experience.

sarahlouise210

IRS101... I do not know how to post a quote (perhaps you could enlighten me!):D
Anyway... I do work for HMRC:o and the advice we are given is that a claim CAN be backdated for UP to 93 days. Now I have not really thought of this before but I think it must be because some months have 31 days. However, as far as I can see over a 3 month period the MOST the claim should be backdated is 92 days as there are not 3 consecutive months with 31 days!! :doh: Unless of course they are extra generous and as 31 days is the maximum days in a month they allow this (say for claims that start mid month??) :think: Tax credit claims are calculated daily not monthly so why they dont just say how many days(not months) they will backdate for in public information I do not know

Yours pondering

Sarahlouise

irs101

Well 3 months is what it says in the legislation, so presumably that's why they say it in public (to do otherwise would indicate they wrote the legislation incorrectly :doh: . So it seems very likely that they wrote "3 months" in the legislation, the techies writing the system said that doing exactly 3 months would make the code more complicated, so they agreed the more generous 93 days to ease the (already very complicated) calculation coding.

Fair enough. It beats one part of the calculation where (legend has it) HMRC intended it to do one thing, the techies did something different, so they rewrote that bit of the legislation because it was too hard to unravel the IT system. The good thing is that in all the examples I've heard (which are all relatively minor things) of where the system doesn't do what was legislated or intended, it has gone in the claimants favour.
irs

Savvy_Sue

irs101 wrote:

It beats one part of the calculation where (legend has it) HMRC intended it to do one thing, the techies did something different, so they rewrote that bit of the legislation because it was too hard to unravel the IT system.

:rotfl:

irs101 wrote:

The good thing is that in all the examples I've heard (which are all relatively minor things) of where the system doesn't do what was legislated or intended, it has gone in the claimants favour.

That's a relief.

Debsc_3

i ahve been told that my overpayment for 2003 /04 is now their error and i will not be required to repay.i have already paid some of this money to them.Will i get it back in a lump sum or will it be offset againt overpayments in 04/05 and 05/06

fatblokexl

debsc, please see the tax credit problems!! thread for your answer