Tax credit & universal credit renewal

spook104

I'm hoping for some advice as my partner has possibly got us into a bit of trouble.
Some background info.
She is self employed qualified for almost full housing benefit, tax credits based on low income and towards childcare cost.
I'm full time employed don't claim any benefits.
I moved in last year in Nov with her.
About the same time tax credits stopped the childcare element as they said they hadn't received proof of the costs. This was resolved in late Jan 2019.
In Feb/Mar 2019 she reapplied for housing benefit with my details backdated to Nov. We are currently paying off the overpayment.

The problem is she didnt update tax credits at the same time. She is particularly bad at doing forms and getting thing done on time (I'm just finding these things out). Fast forward to now and she has been told that she will need to claim Universal credit. According to entitled.to we will qualify.

So my question is....
Given the above what is going to happen?
Will we have to pay back to Tax credits everything between Nov 2018 and now? Or will they simply work out the difference between what we should have been getting on UC and what she was getting in Tax Credits and pay back the difference?

poppy12345

spook104 wrote: »

So my question is....
Given the above what is going to happen?
Will we have to pay back to Tax credits everything between Nov 2018 and now? Or will they simply work out the difference between what we should have been getting on UC and what she was getting in Tax Credits and pay back the difference?

You will have an overpayment for the tax credits which will need to be repaid back to HMRC.



The difference will not be worked out against UC because there was no claim made. UC can only be backdated for 1 month in extreme circumstances and i highly doubt yours will be backdated because you forgot to report the changes to HMRC.

calcotti

Your partner was claiming Tax Credits as a single person. When you moved in she no longer qualified as a single person. It is not possible to convert a single person Tax Credits claim to a couple claim - it requires a new claim. However new claims can no longer be made. As poppy says everything after November is therefore going to be an overpayment. This will have to be paid back - most likely by deduction from any UC award.

In the past it was possible to ask HMRC to do 'notional offsetting' which allowed a reduction in the overpayment to take account of any ongoing Tax Credit entitlement that would have applied had the change in circumstances been reported at the correct time. The current position on this is unclear but it may be worth your partner asking HMRC about this - although I suspect that she will be told that it cannot apply as a new couples claim has not been made (and cannot be made).

See https://revenuebenefits.org.uk/tax-credits/guidance/how-to-deal-with-hmrc/dealing-with-debt/#Notional%20entitlement (the relevant bit is quite a long way down).