I think it stinks that the government continue to adopt double standards in dealing with the issue of tax credit overpayments. If the DWP overpay benefit due to official error then the benefit is non recoverable irrespective of whether or not the claimant knew they were being overpaid, yet with tax credit (and housing/council tax benefit) they continue to put in the added condition that if the claimant knew they were being overpaid, recovery is justified.

What stinks is that the TCO are not being made to pay for their own mistakes, like the DWP. Even when a claimant notices they are getting the wrong amount of tax credit and informs them, AND they fail to act on the information for months, the TCO can still recover the overpayment. And there's no right of appeal!

Another slightly worrying take on this. Instead of HMRC adopting an approach more like DWP, could well evolve that the opposite happens ie. DWP (and SSA in Northern Ireland) may become more like HMRC in terms of recovering overpayments. I have been to meetings where the view was expressed that regardless of the reasons, an overpayment is an overpayment from public funds and should be recovered. Wonder what lies ahead?

i think you're right. it has been going this way since the 1998 Act, and the recent Commissioners' decisions also head that way, despite the political talk of social justice. there is a huge inequality of arms, and the public are not only expected to pay for the scheme and its administration - which seems to largely consist in giving huge sums of public money to multinationals, but are also expected to underwrite its mistakes and poor performance. what's worse, the very poorest have to pay as individuals, for the mistakes of officials. it's very disproportionate. and if the state can't lose, it has very little incentive to get it right in the first place...

Injustice has a strange way of bouncing back on the perpetrators, that's all i can say at the present time...