Advisers should know that, while the Tax Credit legislation is carefully drafted to make it impssible to appeal about any aspect of an overpayment, it is possible to appeal against errors in calculating Entitlement. I have successfully argued, for two clients so far, that if HMRC raise an overpayment, they must have reviewed the claimant's entitlement in the first place to have decided they had been overpaid. Of course, they don't issue decision notices after reviewing entitlement, so I've had to assume the date of review is "on or before" the date of the overpayment notice. After studying Section 38 of the Tax Credits Act, I picked a clause that the client was most likely to have had their award reviewed under, and appealed under that clause. The argument is, that the HMRC have reviewed the claimant's award and have got their figures wrong. In both cases, HMRC wrote back to me to acknowledge they had received an appeal. Then they wrote a second time to say they had reviewed their decision, and decided that the overpayment was indeed less than they had originally calculated (by about 40 per cent.) Since they had reviewed their decison, the appeal lapsed and so the claimant would have to appeal again if still not satisfied. HMRC appear to be desperately keen to avoid being called to account at an appeal hearing. But in these two cases, pursuing an appeal resulted in a fast result for the client, in that they had their overpayment figure nearly halved. I have never been able to achieve anything this good, this fast, by using the HMRC's discretionary system. I don't know why more advisers don't try this. It's not the first time I've mentioned it on rightsnet.
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