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gene hunt
Rank; Hector Tax Inspector
United Kingdom
9 Posts |
 Posted - 25/01/2009 : 17:36:06
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Hi
I have a overpayment despute with the tax credit agency. I changed my details to a joint claim with my partner and gave our yearly earnings. They misinterpreted my partners income and overpayed us to the tune of 1,566 pounds. They had my partner down as earning 1,0356 pounds a year!!!? Her real earnings were 13, 056. i maintain the details i sent are correct, yet they want me to pay it back claiming its my fault.
I have put in the first dispute form and had that rejected, i have now had a request for me to pay the money immediately! what could i do as a next step to appeal?
any help would be greatly appreciated!!!
simon wadsley
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missfroy2
Rank; Captain Gordon
236 Posts |
Posted - 25/01/2009 : 21:21:21
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Hi
First things first - it is likely that your case is going to be a dispute rather than an appeal. If you search the forums I have explained the difference between two. Essentially, you have no right of appeal against recovery of an overpayment, only against the amount.
So, you are in the dispute process. At a guess, I would say that HMRC are probably refusing to right it off by saying that you failed in your responsibilities to check the award notices.
Unfortunately in tax credits, it is not enough to provide HMRC with the correct info, they seem to expect you to also check they have processed it correctly.
So the first thing I would advise you to do is find the award notice that you received after reporting your partner's income. See if the error is clearly visible on it. If it is, then you may find the dispute more difficult as HMRC would expect you to check the notice and tell them that there is an error.
If the error is not clearly visible on your award notice, then there is your argument. If it is, then are there are exceptional circumstances that would help you explain why you were not able to check the award notice?
That should help as a starter.
They will not look at this again unless you submit a new dispute with new evidence. You will need to do this to get recovery stopped, otherwise they will continue trying to seek the money. It is important that you do something - either dispute or make a time to pay arrangement whilst you sort this out.
Good luck
MF2
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Ali M-W
Da Tech(y ones)
3296 Posts |
Posted - 26/01/2009 : 06:48:10
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Hi - sorry to hear you have been entrapped by Tax Credits, but hopefully you will find all you are looking for here: www.taxCC.org . Click on the 'How to Dispute' button or link to download the widely acclaimed Tax Credit Casualties' free Dispute pack. You'll probably find it helpful to send off for all your data now, using the 'SARN request' template in the pack.
HMRC is now using a revised COP26 to determine what part of your overpayment it thinks you should repay, and how much it is prepared to write off. Here are the key 'responsibilities' within it:
HM Revenue and Customs should:
o Give correct advice
o Record and use information accurately
o Correct errors notified by claimant
o Update reported changes in circumstances within 30 days
The main responsibilities for the claimant (from 1 February 2008) are to:
o Give accurate, complete and up to date information
o Report changes in circumstances
o Use the checklist to check every award notice
o Tell HMRC of errors in an award notice within 1 month
o Check that amounts received agree with the award notice
So already, from what you have said, it seems that HMRC has failed in some of its responsibilities to you. You obviously fulfilled your responsibility to "report changes in circumstances" as you say: "I changed my details to a joint claim with my partner and gave our yearly earnings". Before that, you would surely have given "accurate, complete and up to date information". In turn, HMRC clearly did not "record and use information accurately" as they based your award on an ncorrect salary for your wife.
As Miss Froy suggests, where HMRC may come back at you is with your so-called failure to spot their errors, which they will argue is because you did not "Use the checklist to check every award notice" (or so they will say, if your wife's salary is shown incorrectly on there). Your SARN data should show you how you respond to this.
If the award notice shows your wife's salary as is truly was, rather than how they imagined it to be, and they have just done a 'behind the scenes' calculation on the wrong amount, then you are home and dry (it happened to me, when they had used an incorrect nil salary behing the scenes yet plastered my correct salary on my award notices).
It gets a little harder if they have put your wife's incorrect salary on your award forms, for they will then claim you failed to pick up this mistake when it was clear to see. There are, however, arguments you can use if this is indeed the case.
You say, "They had my partner down as earning 1,0356 pounds a year!!!? Her real earnings were 13, 056." Those figures, to a quick glance, do look similar as they all contain the same digits. To people with dyslexia, for example, the incorrect figure might appear correct. Or your data request could reveal so many different award notices that it was impossible to know what was what (that happens). Less likely is that you did spot it, or noticed a change in the sums paid to you, and called them, but if the Helpline swore that your award was right at the time (which happens a lot), then you can argue that they did not 'give correct advice' (being told your award was right when it wasn't used to win cases for people under the old "reasonable belief" test which preceeded the new COP26 and it is often worth pointing this out if it applies).
Another consideration when arguing that you met your responsibilities under the new COP26 is the date of all this. You see, HMRC are demanding that you "Use the checklist to check every award notice". Yet the checklist they now send out to claimants is a RECENT ADDITION! So if you were never sent this checklist in the first place, which talks you through checking your award notice, you could argue that you would never have realised that you had to go to such lengths. So automatically this means that HMRC failed to "give correct advice" as they should have clearly told you at the outset that there was high risk of official errors and that you would have to meticulously check their work or be held responsible.
I would personally - though please note that I am a lay person, and no expert, who has won her dispute but is giving this advice from goodwill and not expert understanding and knowledge - go down the route of spelling out to HMRC their failed responsibilities and insisting on a full write-off. I would ask for my data, stating that I will provide any evidence they need from this, and insist that recovery is stopped right away as is my right.
I would copy the letter to my MP, by putting "cc to ...." at the bottom of the letter where HMRC can see it. I would also mention "Tax Credit Casualties" as, believe it or not, we are now getting some recognition. I am sure HMRC are now aware - as it was in a tabloid - that the Tax Credit Casualties have access to legal advice now. I can't be too specific here on this forum, as I am sworn not to give too much away, but rest assured that the tide is turning and we cannot be browbeaten in quite the same way we were.
Then I would write to my MP enclosing a copy of my letter to HMRC. Ask her or him to intercede. If they are Conservative or Lib Dem, they generally will launch in with a good level of support and enthusiasm - Lib Dems especially. Labour MPs are a little too sold on the idea that tax credits are the next best thing to sliced bread (even though on our petition a recent signatory has said that tax credits have made her contemplate killing herself) and sometimes have to be prodded into action. But whatever their politics or willingness to be decent people and help us, they do need to know the effect all this bodgery is having on us - who vote them in!
I think you have a fighting chance of success there, so please take heart and carry on with your dispute. It is very, very common for HMRC's first response to be a "pay up or else" one, so just see this as very par for the course.
Good luck, and do use this forum - and the excellent Miss Froy - to clear up anything you aren't sure about.
Stop Press is that UNISON has - behind the scenes - passed a Motion in support of the Tax Credit Casualties, so if your Labour MP is not taking all this as seriously as (s)he should - you may need to remind them that the Party's reputation is at stake here.
I will say no more, as I have my own views about what masquerades as a Socialist Party...
Good luck, and let us know how you get on. Ali.
Trinity: No one has ever done anything like this.
Neo: That's why it's going to work.
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gene hunt
Rank; Hector Tax Inspector
United Kingdom
9 Posts |
Posted - 26/01/2009 : 21:12:39
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Hi there! Thank you both very much for your kind advice!! I have just sent a complaint letter to the tax credit agency and i copied my MP in and wrote him a letter. He is labour with regret and pretty useless by all accounts, his name is Ian Cawsey of Brigg and Goole! I will keep you both posted on developments, i am just relieved that this site exists and people are fighting these gangsters! i am already paying a previous overpayment back and i will be damned if they hold me responsible for this one!
simon wadsley |
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Alan the Geordie
Da Purple one
2787 Posts |
Posted - 26/01/2009 : 21:16:43
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Hi Simon
Thanks for naming & shaming your "less than useful MP".
It's nice to know just who they are when it comes to voting time!!
"The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible
reductions. In this way the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed."
Adolf Hitler |
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gene hunt
Rank; Hector Tax Inspector
United Kingdom
9 Posts |
Posted - 27/01/2009 : 19:34:19
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Hi Alan!! Thanks for the reply!
I will see what kind of responce he gives but i gotta say i dont have faith in this countries statesmen after the mess they have left us in! |
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gene hunt
Rank; Hector Tax Inspector
United Kingdom
9 Posts |
Posted - 31/01/2009 : 14:19:51
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| Just a little update! the HM Revenue has recieved my compliant and are investigating. My MP recieved my letter and compliant and is making enquires! So the ball is moving, wether or not it is succesful ive got a feeling with my MP being labour he will side with HM |
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Alan the Geordie
Da Purple one
2787 Posts |
Posted - 31/01/2009 : 21:18:26
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quote:
Originally posted by gene hunt
Just a little update! the HM Revenue has recieved my compliant and are investigating. My MP recieved my letter and compliant and is making enquires! So the ball is moving, wether or not it is succesful ive got a feeling with my MP being labour he will side with HM
Hi simon
Whether our MPs like it or not they really DO work for us!!
We elect them (give them thier jobs) and we PAY them - their salaries AND their "perks" too. That means that WE are the bosses!!
If your MP isn't performing in the way you wanthim/her to, then do what you would do with any other employee - Bollock him/her, and if the situation doesn't improve, make sure that you, your family & friends vote him/her out of a job!!
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Re:Over payment advice
