interesting.
maybe our in - year recovery problems result from them paying attention to the Oz problems of inability to make in-year adjustments? one extreme to another?
also interesting that australian social security official errors are waived if they were received in good faith and the person did nothing to cause the overpayment in most weeks.
the additional condition put on to the tax benefit is that repayment would cause severe hardship, and the ombudsman slams that as 'harsh and unreasonable.'
so if our bunch has looked at the aussie system, may one assume they knew exactly what they were doing?
there's another way of looking at official error overpayments than the hardship caused by recovery, and that is the power it gives to statutory authorities to do their job with insufficient care or even recklessly, whereas fair official error rules are a useful check and balance on the system. you should know you're in trouble when overpayments are inevitable within the system devised,(identified by the australian ombudsman) and instead of troubling to design a scheme that works, the state just gives itself the power to recover any loses caused by its failures, regardless of fairness,so that's all right then.
put in the context of economic and social policy, there's a whiff of totalitarianism about it all...i'm sure our ombudsman will manage to confine her report to the tax credit system, because she will have to, but all the same...
there are human rights issues - people on low incomes have a real important need to know what their income is going to be so that they can budget and make choices- and although unexpected changes of circs can strike at any time, a state run system shouldn't operate like like the fickle finger of fate, and hit you out of the blue with a recovery notification for an overpayment, or send you half a dozen revised and incomprehensible notices at a time. why didn't they think about that?
jj
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