Carer Allowance

sam_p2021

Hi all,
I care for our special needs child and get carer allowance. My husband owns limited company and I do some secretarial work and gets paid around £139 per week since last year. Last year we asked accountant to give £139 per week salary but they made a mistake and gave a monthly salary of 12 months over 11 months. Now carer allowance unit wants us to repay amount paid since my salary for 11 months is above their earning limit. 
Is there anything can be done in this situation. Is there an appeal process? Their customer service is not very helpful.

pmlindyloo

There is an appeal process.  
Read this:

Your guide to challenging a benefits decision | Carers UK

I am not sure on what you would base your appeal.

Did you receive the £139 per week from the company into your bank account?  If you did this would give you a record of your earnings.

If not, then is your accountant giving them the figures?  If so, could he/she write a letter saying that it was a mistake and the earnings should have been .....

If not, from where did they get your earnings?

Hope that makes sense.

kaMelo

 sam_p2021 said:

Hi all,
I care for our special needs child and get carer allowance. My husband owns limited company and I do some secretarial work and gets paid around £139 per week since last year. Last year we asked accountant to give £139 per week salary . Now carer allowance unit wants us to repay amount paid since my salary for 11 months is above their earning limit. 
Is there anything can be done in this situation. Is there an appeal process? Their customer service is not very helpful.

Try to correct the error from where the mistake happened rather than from the end point and appealing with DWP.

Firstly, how much were you actually paid?
If you're employed on PAYE then your earnings would be reported each pay period via RTI so I don't quite know what you mean when you say "but they made a mistake and gave a monthly salary of 12 months over 11 months"
If you have only been paid £139 per week and the RTI data is incorrect then ask your husbands accountant to correct this.

Failing that Tell your husbands accountant to notify their liability insurance that you're going to be putting in a claim.

Alice_Holt

"My husband owns limited company and I do some secretarial work and gets paid around £139 per week since last year. Last year we asked accountant to give £139 per week salary "

Last year the earnings threshold was £132.  £139 is the 23/24 number.

You can appeal and ask the tribunal to rule on whether the excess received was not earnings (as different from your stated remuneration in your agreed contract of employment) but a gratuitous payment resulting from the accountants error.
But that may be tricky given that it's your husband's company.   Are you a shareholder?

tacpot12

If the employer hadn't been controlled by your husband and you had been paid too much, your employer would expect you to repay the money you had received in error, and would legally be entitled to withhold this pay from future payments of salary, so I think that you should be able to get this error corrected by the company, who will inform HMRC, and once this is done, you have more of a hope overturning the DWP decision. In the meantime, I would tell them that the payment was an error and that you have to repay the money and that you want a couple of weeks to get the error fixed. I would also talk to the accountant and make sure that they know how to fix the error at the HMRC end. You can tell the DWP how long the accountant thinks it will take for the correction to appear on HMRC's systems. 

kaMelo

 @Alice_Holt, you make a great point that the earnings threshold for 2022-23 was £132.
Without knowing what the OP was actually paid it is difficult to suggest what action to take.