Higher Tax Child Benefit penalties

pods1811

Hello,
We have a bit of a strange situation.  We were receiving CB and then when the new laws came in as my husband was earning over 50K we decided just to stop receiving it.  I did it online and they confirmed Jan 2013 that I no longer wanted to receive it.  So fast forward a few months and we were still getting it.  I rang them to let them know and they told me that there was a massive backlog and they would get round to stopping it.  Then again almost a year later we were still getting it and I phoned again and was told that they would contact us as there had been a lot of backlog.  So, worried that we were still getting it when we shouldnt I set up an account and the money came in and just went straight to that account waiting for them to ask for it back.  To be perfectly honest life just got busy and we just didnt think about it and then last year I contacted them and said you are still paying us and we have it all here and what do we need to do to give you it back?  They just said they had made a mistake and not made any notes on my account and asked me to send them the evidence I had asked it to be stopped.  I had kept their email and sent it to them.  They told us they wouldnt penalise us as it seemed to be their mistake and stopped the payments.  But they still didnt send us the bill to pay it back. 

This was almost 11 months ago and I have now tried to contact them 3 times on the phone and I have sent 2 letters.  In feb they left a message for me to call them and when I did they told me they didnt know why I had been called as there is no notes on my file or my husbands and no open case.  Its extremely frustrating. 

So my husband hasnt been filling out SA forms every year as he is an employee and just gets a payslip each month.  They have written to us today to say that they are now discussing penalties/fines for us not declaring it as extra income in SA forms from my husband and when he called they said thats the main problem here as we should have declared it.  We had no idea we needed to declare anything which is maybe naive but thats where we are.

Does anyone know if we have a leg to stand on with regards to the penalties or how we could argue our case.  We have to phone them again on Wednesday and discuss our case and I dont really know what else to say to them about this.  I have tried to give them their money back numerous times and we havent tried to defraud anyone.  We havent ever even touched the money as we knew it wasnt ours. 

daveyjp

The SA form does specifically ask about CA payments.  If you have been receiving payments, even if you have confirmation of cancellation, it would have been easier to simply declare the payments on the SA and pay them back each year.

Provide the evidence that they accepted your online application for CB payments to be cancelled and therefore you won't be penalised for their errors, but you are happy to repay the CB if they give you details how to do so.

Be prepared to get your MP involved.