Child Tax Credit Renewal - Can they do this?

[Simon7685]

Hi Everyone

I received my Tax Credit Renewal Pack today and decided to renew it straight away by phone.

My circumstances are straightforward, I receive Child Tax Credit only, I receive Income Support and a disability premium.

Last year I was receiving child tax credit of £166.80 every 4 weeks.

They have now informed me that I will only receive £165.26 every 4 weeks, as they are recovering an overpayment at the rate of £18.36 every payment.

Now I did have an overpayment (which was there fault) in 2003. They were recovering this from WTC until I became ill.

So the bottom line is everything has gone up but I am now receiving less than before. I understand that the overpayment has to be repaid but how can they justify leaving you with less money?

It is hard enough trying to bring up a family, when because of ill health you can't work and the increases in benefits are substantialy less than the cost of living increase year on year.

Is there anything I can do about this? Or do I really have to just accept it?

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Simon

[AwakeNow]

Originally Posted by Simon7685

Hi Everyone

I received my Tax Credit Renewal Pack today and decided to renew it straight away by phone.

My circumstances are straightforward, I receive Child Tax Credit only, I receive Income Support and a disability premium.

Last year I was receiving child tax credit of £166.80 every 4 weeks.

They have now informed me that I will only receive £165.26 every 4 weeks, as they are recovering an overpayment at the rate of £18.36 every payment.

Now I did have an overpayment (which was there fault) in 2003. They were recovering this from WTC until I became ill.

So the bottom line is everything has gone up but I am now receiving less than before. I understand that the overpayment has to be repaid but how can they justify leaving you with less money?

It is hard enough trying to bring up a family, when because of ill health you can't work and the increases in benefits are substantialy less than the cost of living increase year on year.

Is there anything I can do about this? Or do I really have to just accept it?

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Simon

Hello Simon,

Interesting problem. I looked at the site and it states very firmly you cannot appeal, so I dug a little further.

You do not have to pay back all the over payment - they say - if the overpayment was their fault and not yours.

What if we fail in our responsibilities?

If you fulfil all of your responsibilities but we have failed in ours, we won’t ask you to pay back all of the overpayment arising from our failure.


This is their site:

HM Revenue & Customs: COP 26 - What happens if we have paid you too much tax credit?

Read through your and their responsibilities and if you can clearly show it was through their own fault, you have a case to complain about being left poorer to pay back money they gave through their own fault.

Check through tho in case other factors are invovled such as the following:

Whenever you tell us about an error we won’t collect any overpayment that may build up because of our failure to correct our error from this time.

What if we both fail to meet our responsibilities?

We will look at the circumstances of your case and we may write off parts of an overpayment if we have failed to meet one or more responsibilities but you have also failed to meet yours.
What if it takes you some time to tell us we have failed our responsibilities?

We ask you to tell us about any mistakes we have made within one month of receiving your award notice. If you don’t tell us within one month we will ask you to pay back the overpayment up to the date you contacted us. We won’t ask you to repay any overpayment, which is due to that mistake, after the date you contacted us.


Nice cup of tea or whatever you fancy would be good when you sit to read this report and hope it helps some.

Good luck

[Simon7685]

Hi

Thanks fr the info, I have read right through it and I can't see anyway they would 'write off' the overpayment or any part of it.

The problem arose in 2003 when we came out of the 'pub game', that was in the May. I had to go and sign on, to ensure my NI stamp was paid. We had decided to take six monthe out to recharge the batteries, as we were worn out, (I had been doing around 100+ hours a week) and we had a small child.

We had been receiving £45 a month in tax credits because of our income, which was fine. Anyway the jobcentre told me to ring them as our circumstances had changed, so I did. The next thing I new was £1500 credited to my account. To be honest I wondered but assumed that they were right and I must have been owed that money. The following April at renewal, they came up with this overpayment, which they have been recovering ever since.

So I accepted that while they made the initial mistake, I had a responsibility to question the £1500. My problem now is as I said, the amounts of CTC have gone up for this year (not as much as the cost of living though!) but I am now receiving less than I was last year because of this overpayment.

I asked yesterday and they told me hard luck I just had to accept it, I don't feel that is fair. It is hard enough to survive in the present climate, without effectively receiving a reduction my money.

I have been trawling the internet, trying to find information. There is enough about overpayments and how to appeal against an overpayment, I am happy to accept that it needs to be repaid. What I can't find is anything about how to appeal against the amount of recovery, or what the rules are on this.

I am drafting a letter to them but could do with some solid information to use in arguing my case, to get the amount decreased.

If anyone who knows anything, or if anyone has been in this position and managed to get some reduction, I would appreciate some ideas and any help offered.

Simon

[AwakeNow]

Hello again,

Depending on how the overpayment occurred then yes parts of the overpayment may be able to be written off.

They state that giving them the wrong information; being late in telling them of a change of circumstance would be down to you, the claimant and then the overpayment has to be paid.

It sounds as if they made the mistake when they recorded the information you gave them and/or they did not act on the information you gave them.

The award notice you received at the time would have included all the information you had given them. It is the claimant’s responsibility to check through the notice to see if it is correct. It is also their responsibility to contact HM Revenue & Customs to inform them if anything is not correct on this information.

It is up to the claimant to see if the award granted matches the amount it states on the award notice as failure to do so can make an overpayment arise.

Ok so you did not query this at the time however it seems to me you have questioned the award since and by their own statement, they will not claim after the query has been made:

“What if we both fail to meet our responsibilities?
We will look at the circumstances of your case and we may write off parts of an overpayment if we have failed to meet one or more responsibilities but you have also failed to meet yours.

What if it takes you some time to tell us we have failed our responsibilities?
We ask you to tell us about any mistakes we have made within one month of receiving your award notice. If you don’t tell us within one month we will ask you to pay back the overpayment up to the date you contacted us. We won’t ask you to repay any overpayment, which is due to that mistake, after the date you contacted us. “


Think back to 2003, where there any illnesses that affected your immediate situation, anything at all that could be used as a valid reason why you were unable to correct the mistake immediately?

If there is nothing that interfered with your ability to sort the mistake at the time, then you have no case, it seems to me, to ask for repayments to be taken into consideration until the time of your query – that date will be when you first asked them about the overpayments and what this was for.

This is their mistake, and they say they will not ask for any overpayment from the date you bring the matter of this to their attention.

So I suggest you write a letter stating when the overpayment was made and when you questioned it – this would be when you started paying back - and ask why they have not stopped the repayments in accordance with their own policy as this is causing unnecessary hardship.

The appeal only works if you thought the level of the award was wrong however you can dispute the recovery of the award and they will then go on to decide how the overpayment was made and whose fault was it i.e. who failed their responsibility the claimant or the staff or if it was both (as it could be here). This seems to me to be good grounds to have the repayment decision overturned or at least made into smaller amounts.

I would also suggest a trip down to C.A.B. with the paperwork to see if they can help you further.

Hope this has helped make it clearer.

[Simon7685]

Hi

Yes thanks it is a bit clearer and I am composing a letter to them.

Thanks for your help and advice.

If anyone else knows anything about CTC Overpayment recovery then please contribute to the thread.

All help and advice is appreciated.

Simon

[Yellow160]

I had the opposite situation to you, I knew i had been overpayed and wanted to start paying them back but they wouldnt help me when i called them, i sent 3 letters RD and got no replies from them apart from the letters saying they were going to take further action if i didnt pay the money back! I found that contacting my Local MP and supplying all the details to them resolved the issue. It took my MP's office 1 day to sort everything for me unlike the 4 weeks i had spent trying to do it myself.

maybe contacting your Local MP and explaining what has happened may help you reslove this?

[Simon7685]

Thank you for the idea Yellow160, after the phone call I have just had, I think I will do just that !!

I got to thinking that what they told me could not possibly be correct. I was told that the reason I was getting less was because last year they were not taking anything for the overpayment. I got to thinking then that this just didn't sound right.

I checked HMRC website and discovered that for the year 2007 - 2008 I was entitled to;

Family Element of

[honey5]

looks like end of tax yr returns, i had an over payment which they are taking back at £600 pm :o
honey x

[Simon7685]

OOps! hit the wrong button!

Family element £545
Child Element £1845

Total of £2,390 /52 X 4 = 183.85 per 4 weeks.

Total actually received was £166.80 Difference -£17.05

Therefore they must have been taking this. I can not check with my award notice, as I never received one, I queried this a few times and was told it was still being processed!

This year the award for 2008 - 2009 is;

Family element £545
Child element £2085 Total = £2630 /12 X 4 = 202.32 per 4 weeks.

Amount being received = £165.26 so they have to be taking £37.06 a week!

With this information I decided to ring them and put them right!

[Simon7685]

I asked them to go through everything again with me as I believed they had got things wrong. I was asked why I thought this, so I told them as per their website info' there figures just could not be right and I quoted the above workings out and asked how I could be receiving less than last year, as this made me considerably worse off.

To my amazement, I was told "you are only receiving £1.60 a week less, so you cannot be considerably worse off! I didn't actualy believe that so I advised him, as the cost of living had increased over the last year and the rates of CTC had risen by £240 for the year, to be receiving less than last year, I was considerably worse off!!!

Their website quoted CTC of £202.32 every 4 weeks (when calculated) and I was actualy receiving £37.06 less than this at £165.26. Yet they had told me I was losing £18.36 for the overpayment, so where was the difference??

He went away again and came back to say my payments were now provisional and the increase hadn't been applied, so I was receiving last years award amount less the £18.36, despite having renewed my claim! This also shows they had to be taking money last year after they said they weren't!

I asked when it would be updated, he said when it's processed, I said well will that be given the fact I renewed by phone last week. He said to phone back tomorrow and Thursday and Friday and Saturday and they would look to see if it had been processed. So I asked how long on average it would take so I wasn't ringing every day at 10p a minute, he just reiterated exactly the same and told me to ring every day.

So basically:

They said they took no money last year - they did.
They have the cheek to tell me I am not considerably worse off.
They can't tell me how long it takes to process my renewal and can't give any indication, other than to incur 10p a minute costs to ring them every day!

Oh and not to forget telling me it is just hard luck about the recovery amount and I have to just pay it!

What a wonderfull government they really are!.....

Why is it they can not get things right?
Don't they realise that CTC and WTC are for the benefit of people with little or no money. As such every penny counts!

I now intend to contend the overpayment as they were equally to blame for it and copy everything to my MP.

Simon - still but also fuming !!

[AwakeNow]

Hello again,

If they haven't processed the award notice then how cna they claim - surely this is relative to the award otherwise anyone in the office can make a provisional sum on figures that have no bearing on the true amount? They messed up and this is their responsibility - or failure of it.

Sound's as if writing to the M.P. will at least clarify what needs doing and good luck with it.

[The GodMother]

Thanks guys i will inform my mum of this as she was getting one of the tax credits and they filled out the paperwork dur to her being dyslexic and they filled it out WRONG according to the repayments department and they want over 3 years of money back of her. They are taking her WHOLE benefit ao she gets no money at all.

[Simon7685]

Hi GM

There argument as always will probably be, it was her who suppplied the information. I thought there was a percentage scale of how much they can recover?? It may be worth checking, it doesn't seem right that she should get nothing! Although it seems to me they don't give a t**s what they do to people.

Simon

[The GodMother]

well they can try but they will have a fight on there hands and that is from her not me. They have not meet me yet.

Anyway if they try that then they will have a fight from me as they were making sure she understood the question.

[tee_s_uk]

Hi Simon
I have been fighting the modern day Sherrifs of Nottingham for a couple of years now, and although I am not quite in the same position as you, I know where you are coming from.
We recieved an overpayment of £2k, in one lump sum, phoned on the day it went in to account and was told to keep it, the amount would be taken from us over the preceeding months to even out overpayment. Two years later, I am now divorced, have high blood pressure and am being solely chased for £2800 and threatened with a CCJ!!!
I have had my MP on the case and he has done me proud, but they are bullies and you need to keep fighting, do not give up.