letter from Inland Revenue Chairman Nick Montagu to the Sunday Telegraph "correcting a number of inaccuracies that appeared in an article published on 1 February about tax credit overpayments" -

"We tell people when they must notify us of changes and when it would be advisable to do so ... if we have paid too much, we would usually expect to recover the overpaid money, and it in every one's interests for that to happen as quickly as possible ...

In cases of hardship we can make additional payments and carry over the resulting overpayment to be adjusted in the following year ...

Robert Watts claims that many people did not receive any notification of how their payments were calculated. In fact the award notice explains the award ... anyone who want to get a general idea of the level of tax credits they could be eligible for can do so by completeing the "do i qualify" pages on the new tax credits pages of the Inland Revenue website"

I agree with him that it important to think about how tax revenue is being spent. How much tax payers money is being paid to this idiot to stick his head in the sand? Is he the PR man who used to work for Saddam Hussein?

Since when did a letter reminding you of how many children you have, and what your income is, and giving you an annual figure with no explanation of how it was arrived at, constitute a clear explanation of how an award was calculated?

it's really turning into a nightmare. The IR and annually calculated benefits are not up to meeting the immediate needs of the least well off - you'd think somebody might have considered _why_ social security benefits were weekly or even daily benefits, in the old days before performance targets were invented...

a recent client had a revised award notice telling him he'd been overpaid £1200+ WTC which he had to repay. there was still CTC awarded, but payments of both had stopped 4 weeks ago. He had no idea what could have caused the overpayment, and in the absence of a clue, we assumed the award was incorrectly calc'd in the first place.

however, client had since become unemployed, and he and his pregnant wife and 4 kids were surviving on £85. 75 JSA + child benefit. he quite reasonably complained of severe financial hardship.

i despached a letter to the IR PO box no. in preston asking for payments to be restored, and a week later, when he came to see if i'd had a reply (i hadn't), i sent him to the local tax office with a copy of my letter and my fingers crossed.

a few days latter, i received a piece of _general_ standard drivel from preston about adjusting annual awards, making additional payments in some cases to ensure that payments are not reduced to levels which would cause hardship, and they will be publishing a code of practice on the subject - which i had referred to anyway in my letter to them. Nothing addressing my client's particular case or the points i had raised. It was signed with a squiggle, with the title PROCESSING OFFICER, no name under it.

the only telephone number on the letter was the help-line number, which i rang, and moaned at someone about not having a proper reply, just a general stock letter, and he was actually quite helpful, giving me some information about hardship payments can be calc'd to 70% of the estimated next years entitlement and o/pts recovered over 3 years - all new to me - and tipped me off about speaking to the local tax office, because they know what they're doing there! : )

anyway, i phoned my client, and he was happy. his trip to the tax office was fruitful - they had paid him £1800. he hadn't a clue what it was all about, and neither have i... anyone?

jj

In terms of being in every one's interest to start recover asap. There are more options on how to deal with an overpayment after the year is up, e.g. not to recover if caused by official error.

I was very interested to read jj's message dated 13.2.2004, especially the bit about the IR calculating hardship top ups to 70%, and also the ability to recover OPs over 3 years etc. I can see nothing like this in the published code of practice on OPs, which suggests it comes from a code that officers use that we don't know about.

This would of course be quite normal (does anyone remember the S manual in the good old Supp Ben days?). The extended recovery period is of particular interest, and reminds me of the battles many have had trying to get local authorities to stretch council tax debt recovery over longer periods. How can we check if there is a private code? How can we lobby to improve it?

From the grassy knoll

Steve

There are two useful articles now available online about Tax Credit overpayment recovery, taken form the December 2003 edition of CPAG's Welfare Rights Bulletin:
Tax Credit Overpayments – rights and wrongs by Sarah Clarke
http://www.cpag.org.uk/cro/wrb/wrb177/tax_credit.htm
and
Tax Credit Overpayments – official guidance by Simon Osborne
http://www.cpag.org.uk/cro/wrb/wrb177/tax_credit_overpay.htm