Demand for repayment of overpaid child tax credits from past years

bumblestil

Hello. Does anybody know why I would suddenly have received a demand to repay £192 of child tax credits for the year ending April 2013, and £712 for the year ending April 2014?

I've not long sent back my forms, but those covered the years ending April 2015 (actual income) and April 2016 (expected income), so there can't be any new information to affect the previous amounts they decided I was entitled to. I am aware the letters each year have stated some amounts in arrears that would be deducted from my entitlement, but I have always assumed HMRC would manage this sensibly and not demand £900 back with a month's notice. I've never given them any false information, so it seems unreasonable of them to suddenly change their approach.

Do I have to repay this money, given that the overpayment is 1) down to them, not me, and 2) they have had a very long time to solve this if they'd wished?

Thanks in advance for any insights.

Icequeen99

bumblestil wrote: »

Hello. Does anybody know why I would suddenly have received a demand to repay £192 of child tax credits for the year ending April 2013, and £712 for the year ending April 2014?

I've not long sent back my forms, but those covered the years ending April 2015 (actual income) and April 2016 (expected income), so there can't be any new information to affect the previous amounts they decided I was entitled to. I am aware the letters each year have stated some amounts in arrears that would be deducted from my entitlement, but I have always assumed HMRC would manage this sensibly and not demand £900 back with a month's notice. I've never given them any false information, so it seems unreasonable of them to suddenly change their approach.

Do I have to repay this money, given that the overpayment is 1) down to them, not me, and 2) they have had a very long time to solve this if they'd wished?

Thanks in advance for any insights.

How do you know that the overpayment is down to them? It could be just down to how the system works or it could be something you did inadvertently.

They can ask you for them and those overpayments would have been shown on your final award notices for those years.

IQ

bumblestil

Surely any overpayment which has taken this long to rectify is down to HMRC rather than me. They have had no new information from me about those tax years, and they determine what amount I receive each year - therefore they have had the ability to ensure my payments were correct, whilst I simply receive whatever sum they decide to pay.

Icequeen99

bumblestil wrote: »

Surely any overpayment which has taken this long to rectify is down to HMRC rather than me. They have had no new information from me about those tax years, and they determine what amount I receive each year - therefore they have had the ability to ensure my payments were correct, whilst I simply receive whatever sum they decide to pay.

Just because they are trying to recover it now doesn't mean that it has taken this long to rectify, they just haven't been chasing you for it.

You need to look at your final award notices for those two years and you should see the overpayments.

They can't change those old awards now, so the overpayments must have already been there you probably just didn't notice.

IQ