Benefits reclaimed from 12 years ago!!

Suep17

Some advice please!!
My brother has just been contacted by DWP saying he owes over £3700 in child Tax Credits and they have applied to his employer to deduct the repayment from his salary at 15% off his nett income.
He had no previous contact from tax Office, he contacted them to be told he had not been overpaid or claimed anything he wasn’t entitled to but apparently there should been have a ‘declaration form’ in his renewals pack and he failed to return it for 6 years in a row!! He always returned everything that was requested but tax office now say it is out of their hands and he needs to contact DWP directly (hopefully he has done so today). Has anyone else encountered anything similar and does anyone have any advice?

poppy12345

There's been other threads with the same thing. They are starting to catch up with people that owe money to HMRC and some are from as long as 20 years ago.

If he's contacted HMRC and been told he doesn't owe money and hasn't claimed anything he's not entitled to then where has the overpayment come from?

Does he still claim tax credits? If not, has he moved a anytime since claiming tax credits?

tacpot12

Did his renewals pack include a Declaration form? Not all do. If HMRC didn't include one, he would seem to have more grounds to not have filled one in. If one wasn't included, then he should ask HMRC for their calculation that shows he how much he owes. I don't think the DWP will have the full calculation so he needs to ask HMRC for this.

If HMRC are using default data because his Declaration form wasn't returned but he wasn't sent one, he should make a formal complaint to HMRC, and if this fails he should try his MP. 

 

 

poppy12345

You can also make a subject access request to HMRC and then you'll recieve all the information they have regarding your claim.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/hmrc-subject-access-request

sheramber

If a declaration form is not completed at renewal all the tax credits paid for that year are not confirmed and become an overpayment.

However, that should have been picked up before 5 years' further  claims were paid.

Something is amiss there.

Icequeen1

sheramber said:

If a declaration form is not completed at renewal all the tax credits paid for that year are not confirmed and become an overpayment.

However, that should have been picked up before 5 years' further  claims were paid.

Something is amiss there.

I agree, what you have posted doesn't make sense. If you miss sending back your declaration form, all payments from 6 April that year become overpaid. You are not entitled to them because the renewal acts as a claim, if you don't claim you can't be entitled. However, if you don't complete the renewal by the deadline, then your payments stop. The only way to restart them would be to renew within 30 days of your payments stopping or have a good reason for missing the deadline beyond that (up to 31 January). In both of those cases, it would be reinstated from 6 April. If you can't get it reinstated, you have to make a brand new claim. 

So virtually impossible for this to have happened 6 years in a row without him knowing, because each time it did, his payments would stop and he would have to start a brand new claim. 

However, no matter the reason, HMRC can recover old overpayments and he is out of time to appeal or dispute.