Time Limit on Overpayments?

stuartmck

A bit complicated this - so stay with me.

Back in 2005 my wife & I had a letter from Tax Credit office saying that we'd been overpaid as we hadn't sent in the requested renewal form. We promptly rang them up and explained that we had. They requested copies of our p60s - which we sent in (retaining photocopies). We didn't hear anything for 6 months or so, whe we had another letter claiming the overpayment. Again we spoke to them and they requested copies of our p60s. Again we sent these off (although stupidly we didn't retain further copies ourselves).

We didn't hear anything else until this morning when we received a hand delivered letter again saying that we owe this overpayment.

Along with this my wife received a hand delivered letter in just her name saying that she was overpaid in 2004 - just after we got married. They continued paying her the 'single persons' allowance, rather that the 'married' allowance - despite the fact that we'd sent a copy of our marriage certificate off as soon as we returned from our honeymoon. This is the first tome that this overpayment has been brought to our attention.

My question is - does anyone know if there's a time limit within which they should advise you of an overpayment? We've requested dispute forms so will be lodging them as son as they arrive.

Hope this makes sense - seems a bit long and rambling to me, but I've had a long day!

System

I haven't heard of any time limit on recovery of an overpayment. I think as far as the government is concerned they can't be seen to write off overpayments since the money is paid out of the public purse.

If you are going to dispute the overpayments then I would advise you firstly to make a "Subject Access Request", asking specifically for copies of all correspondance between you and TCO, copies of all household notes and a CD of all recorded calls made to TCO.

Your wife will have to make a separate request re her old single claim.

Once you receive the information then you can see the timeline of all events and formulate your reasoning behind your dispute.