Council tax and old non recoverable debt?

sammyjammy

A council tax debt is the same as DWP/HMRC debt it can be recovered ad infinitum just not through the courts.  

The only issue I see is that the payment doesn't appear to have reduced the debt so I'd concentrate on chasing that up.

Pliny88

Alderbank said:

Newcad said:

The 6-year limitation may prevent then from chasing you for payment,(or may not if they did get a liability order back then).
However the debt itself still exists whether they can chase you for it or not.

But look; there's an old debt and so we can regard the extra payment as a voluntary payment to pay off some of that debt.
It appears to me that in the circumstances they were/are quite entitled to do that.

The OP has not revealed which country these events occurred in.

Here in Scotland the law is different; our law of prescription says that after 5 years the debt is actually extinguished, it disappears entirely. So there wouldn't be an old debt. It might be harder to argue that the second payment was a voluntary ex gratia payment made to help the council out following the council tax increase freeze in Scotland.

If the OP is in England or Wales I agree entirely with your post.

Yes I live in Scotland and I've lived here all my my life so the debt definitely relates to an address in Scotland from 1993 until 1996.  It wasn't showing at all on my online council tax account, until I asked for the money back then it appeared on my online council tax account and it's been there since, but with £0.00 as the last payment towards it.  I had no clue this debt existed until last year.