tax credit overpayments new report published

Jon_01

Any advise on what to do after they've referred you to their collections dept after not communicating with you for 18 months ???

JessicaF_2

kinda wrote: »

This was sent to the Tax Credit casualties web site...any takers..


Sarah has just emailed me to say she has had:
<<a call from Madeline (0207 2195209) from the Shadow Chancellor's office (George Osbourne). She said the government/HMRC can only claim overpayments back if they are asked for in the year following the overpayment. Leaving it any longer and then asking is illegal. She wants us to provide her with cases where people are happy for their names to be given to the media and the repayment has been requested more than a year after the overpayment. She has one case, an *********** who was overpaid in 2003 and received the demand to repay in 2006. Do we have any more? >>
I’ve heard that cases can be sent by fax to:
0207 219 6372.
If not, please send to: c/o Madeleine Karlsson, Office of George Osborne MP
House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA
Madeleine writes, ‘I only have until tomorrow to find cases’ so let’s get in quick

A lot of people think that the demands they receive (normally from the Debt arm of HMRC) asking for repayment in 30 days are the first they have heard.

A lot of cases I have seen, actually if you look on the 2003-2004 finalised award notice the overpayment is on there albeit not very clearly and a lot of people didn't understand them and missed them.

The cases that this office are interested in are ones where they were finalised more than once and the overpayment appeared after the 2nd finalisation due to a change made to the award - which often happened at a later date.

Just thought I would clear that up.

pennyfrog

She said the government/HMRC can only claim overpayments back if they are asked for in the year following the overpayment. Leaving it any longer and then asking is illegal.

Can I just ask a really silly question? When it says they can only claim overpayments if they're asked for in the year following the overpayment, does this mean the tax year following or the calendar year?
I've had an enquiry letter saying they're checking our claim for the year ending 5th April '07. During the '06-'07 tax year (July '06), we had quite a large lump sum from them, as they had been underpaying. Now I have a nasty feeling they're going to try and claim it back by saying it's an overpayment.
If they can only claim back in the following year, are we in the 'clear' so to speak?

mrsnicholls

we have been notified about a overpayment of more than 3k from years 2005-2006 - this is over a year after the date so is it illegal then?

fortune_pete

Jon_01 wrote: »

Any advise on what to do after they've referred you to their collections dept after not communicating with you for 18 months ???

Speak to their collections/repayments dept, don't wait for legal proceedings against you to commence.
If you haven't raised a dispute re the overpayment then tell them you wish to open a dispute. They should tell you how to get the information you need i.e. Code of Practice 26, and suspend the repayment process, initially for 6 weeks I believe.
In that 6 weeks you can send off your dispute form and request the data they hold on you and your claims inc. phone calls. This will help you build your case history and help you determine if they've made a mistake.

If you agree they've overpayed you and you wish to make repayments you should discuss with the repayments section just how little they will accept each week/month. This will depend on your income.
The important point though is don't just ignore them because they've let you be for 18 months. It's something you may want to bring up in your dispute when questioning their decisions and actions?

matbe

We are in a similar position as soon as we recieved a letter asking for repayment of an overpaid amount £2000 ish we wrote to them and asked how the overpayment had happened and what year did it occur in.
twelve months went by and we hadnt recieved a reply then in july we had a letter saying pay up or we will refer this to collections.
I wrote again saying why have you not replied to letter and what is going on?
today mw wife got a phone call saying you can pay this off at £50 over four years but still no reason or timeframe the guy said if we didnt pay they would contact us every six months ?

i am quite happy for them to ring me every six months if this means i dont have to pay this.

This is complete madness i am quite happy to tie them up in useless correspondence for ever but would rather sort this mess out once and for all

tommorrows telephone conversation should be good fun though

joyce341

When my husband died,my grandson came to live with me for a while,
Although informed the child tax credit in time in writeing,that my grandson was moveing out,also child benefit and council houseing and council tax benefit,they were the only ones that carried on paying me,the first week I thought it was just paid in arrears,the second week I phoned them up and they stopped it immediately,then asked for a repayment of £190 pounds,i appealed and was told I still had to pay it and could not appeal again,my income for the whole of last year was under £6000,my income at present just over £80 per week,I get my pension in October.
when i phoned them up and told them i had let them know,i was told i could not cancel it in advance,this was last year,trying to work out,carers allowance for my husband who died,bereavment benefit,child tax credit and working tax credit for one year for the inland revenue,on top of loseing my husband was a complete nightmare.
this site is great one of my favourites.:T

camowen

mrsnicholls wrote: »

we have been notified about a overpayment of more than 3k from years 2005-2006 - this is over a year after the date so is it illegal then?

Mine is the same...its for 2005/06 and i am grieved that i have to pay this..i increased my hours in a better paid job and i wrote and told them but still i have this £2.5K to pay...i wonder is it illegal too...can someone help with this?

welshnoonoo

This whole situation is an absolute nightmare. We ended up apparently having an overpayment of over £13K which they have since written of over £5K due to the correction they made (when they realised they had a duplicate system running), but I am still left owing them nearly £4K from 2005/2006.

I have now received a letter telling me they are looking into our 2006/2007 claim too!

I have a box file full of papers they send out and some of them are dated the exact same date but have 2 different sets of figures on.

I am soooo confused by the whole thing, it makes me feel physically sick. I asked them if I can opt out and then back claim, but no they say if I do that I can only back claim up to 3 months (even though they back claim further back than that).

I asked them if I can just opt out - they said "No" if you do that you will have to pay back the £4K in full (which i can't do).

So, in essence, they have us by the short and curlies.

We have spent periods of time being self-employed and that is where all the nightmare started. DH is now the MD of a Ltd Company so it is a little more straight forward, but still a nightmare because we have absolutely no idea of his earnings until after his tax period. I am about to go back into self-employment having spent 1 year as an employee (for DH).

I am simply banging my head against a brick wall with them.

taxcreditvictim

This Tax Credits is a complete nightmare and I wish I had never claimed.

My problem started last summer when I was sent the renewal form back 6 weeks late as I am self employed with summer being the main season when I work all the hours when I am not sleaping or driving.

Anyway because the sacred form was late I was told I had to repay all the Tax Credit I had received for the whole year 2006 to 2007 ( plus a bit from 2005 for reasons unknown) total over 1900 pounds.

I tried to get them to take this from my ongoing claim but they refused saying my "old claim" was "ended" and that the 2007 to 2008 claim was a "new claim" and couldn't be used to fund the "Overpayments". ( I'm absolutely boiling with rage that these imbeciles call this 2000 pound fine for a late form an " Overpayment " )

Anyway during this time, I made my second mistake in filling out a claim form and despite sending a covering letter saying they were not to pay me any money, only to use it to fund the repayment of the "overpayment " all of a sudden cheques started arriving. I cashed the cheques and used the money to write a cheque for 1900 and something to clear the overpayments.

While this was going on one of my 2 children moved out on 5th November so I wrote to both the TCO and child allowance people the very next day. Child allowance was ammended but not the Tax Credit.

I then got a statement saying they wanted to pay me even larger amounts of money. Despite my income rising at that time, they wanted to pay me 3000 pounds for 2007-8 and around 5000 pounds for 2008-9.

When I repayed all my 2006-7 tax credits I wrote a letter telling them it was wrong. They cashed the cheque but it appears never read the letter.

I wrote to my local MP, (income £61,820 plus £147,653 expenses) , the Chancellor of the Exchequer ( income £138,724 plus expenses
£136,854 expenses ) and leader of the opposition ( £132,317 income plus £143,385 expenses)

Leader of the oposition sent a standard letter saying they are "working on proposals".

Chancellor of the exchequer said he would leavie it to my local MP to anser.

My local MP enclosed a reply from TCO which took 3 pages to say if the form is late you have to repay everything.

Now we are another year on and they have finally noticed one of my children has moved out and so want me to repay 1500 pounds I told them not to pay me in the first place. I have told them to end my claim when no overpayments are due but it appears they have ended my claim already leaving me with a debt. I have written another letter for them to lose asking them to take it out of my 2008-9 entitlement but don't hold out much hope.

The question is how do you get out of the Tax Credits system. Despite spending years of building up a good business I am considering emigrating due to the Tax credits and the absurdly high levels of Taxation here even when on a modest income ( 20% income tax, 8 % NI, 17.5% VAT and fuel Tax of 1/4 my income and other taxes/charges/fees.