Working tax credit alleged debt 8 years old.

[jadesdaddy]

Hi
Hope someone can help with this. In March 2012 I received a letter from HMRC saying that I owed almost £800 in overpaid working tax credits. When I disputed this and asked why I owed this amount I was told that I had not returned a renewal form.

I explained at this point that I had not received a form in the post and pointed out that a huge amount of mail is lost by Royal Mail every year (don't remember the amount I quoted) and that if HMRC had posted something that they now claimed was worth nearly £800 I would like proof that it had been posted and not lost by Royal Mail.

I heard nothing again from HMRC until a few weeks ago when they told me the debt (alleged debt) had been passed to the DWP for collection.

The DWP then contacted me saying that they would send a DEA to my employer unless I contacted them. Contacted DWP and asked for the alleged debt to be looked at again (re DWP letter) I was told they have no details of the debt and to contact HMRC. Just a few days later I received a letter from DWP including a letter to my employer with DEA instructions.

Where do I now stand legally and what should I do now?

Thank you.

[lgfa92]

I would like proof that it had been posted and not lost by Royal Mail.

If they can demonstrate it was posted then the law presumes delivery unless the alternative can be shown by yourself.

I heard nothing again from HMRC until a few weeks ago when they told me the debt (alleged debt) had been passed to the DWP for collection.

DWP can recover Tax Credits on behalf of HMRC but the original data regarding the claim would be in HMRC's records. If HMRC won't play ball with providing what you want you need to escalate it to a formal complaint.

[GiddySloth]

Hi, I'm not a legal, just hanging around hoping for a response to my post, however, I used to work in a JCP. Re: WTC - As far as I can gather, if they had been treating your original communication as a dispute they would have been reclaiming the money while that was ongoing, ditto with an appeal, which makes me think that thus far they have treated it as mandatory reconsideration, and have recently decided not in your favour. If that is the case the recent letter they sent you ought to state this, along with the decision date, the reason for the decision and the decision makers name and contact details. Your next steps would be to dispute the decision, and/or appeal the decision (apparently you can do both, at the same time), again, the letter should tell you how to appeal a decision and the time-frame allowed (within 30 days). If the first dispute fails there is also an option of raising a second dispute. Raising a dispute or appealing will not halt the demand for repayment, but you may get your money back eventually if you can prove that they made errors.
My advice would be to conduct all future correspondence by email, so that you have a paper trail. You can and should request that they send you copies of all past correspondence with yourself, including letters you have sent to them and records of telephone calls plus notes made during those calls.If anything is missing, such as a record of a telephone call you made, then they ought to give you the benefit of the doubt and accept that the call was made. In future, if you ever make a call to them or vice versa be sure to take the person's name and job title and make a note of the date, time, duration and content of the call, as well as telephone number you make the call to. Most of all, make sure you set the dispute or appeal in motion within the 30 day time-frame; it doesn't matter if you haven't yet gathered your evidence, or formulated your argument - you can inform them that this will follow.*If you miss the deadline, there is no recourse.*
From your post I would guess that the overpayment relates to the tax year 2010/2011, since you received the first demand in March 2012, presumably because you didn't renew the claim commencing 2011/2012? Can you remember whether your renewals prior to that were automatic or form based? A long shot but If they were automatic previously you could argue that not only did you not receive the form, but that you didn't expect to receive a form. I think, however, that if your WTC suddenly stopped in April 2011 which I assume it must have without renewal, then it would be difficult to argue that you didn't notice. Did you contact them at that point? If not why not?*(I suspect any appeal tribunal will ask those questions).
The sad thing I've found is that many WTC claimants don't renew the claim if their income goes up during the year they're claiming it. This happened to a friend, her hours increased, she informed them immediately by phone and was told not to worry - but they didn't tell her why she didn't have to worry. She worried! Then at the end of the tax year she received a demand for repayment, she repaid a large sum she could ill afford and was so stressed out by the whole experience that she rang them again to cancel her renewal claim which she had just made. What she didn't know was that if she had only renewed the claim the extra money she had earned in the previous year would have been classed as within the margin of leeway, which is £2,500.00, and she wouldn't have had to pay any of the overpayment back. But you have to actually renew for this to kick in.*
Here are a couple of links to useful sites:*
https://revenuebenefits.org.uk/tax-c...ycle/renewals/
https://www.advicenow.org.uk/guides/...t-overpayments
Good luck!

[jadesdaddy]

Hi
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my post and your detailed response.


OK there was nothing at all about appeals or indeed anything else that you mentioned might be in the letter. It simply said that the alleged debt had been passed to the DWP to collect...... Nothing else!


The letter that I received later from the DWP basically said that unless I telephoned before a certain date (which I did) they would be either sending bailiffs or would be sending my employer a DEA. The letter also said that if I disagreed with the alleged debt I should ask them to look at it again. I asked them to look at the debt again and was told that they have no details of it only the amount that they are to collect. Within the week they wrote to me again saying that the DEA had been issued to my employer. Nothing about right of appeal or anything else.


I wrote to the DWP the same day explaining to them that if there ever was a debt it would now be statute barred and that if they continue with this action I shall be informing the FOA and if needs be I will be taking legal action if they continue to harass me.


Now we wait.


Thanks again for your post

[ploddertom]

Send HMRC a SAR & make sure it includes a request for copies of phone calls.

[des8]

Debts to HMRC never become statute barred