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Tax credit claimants should take extra care when checking their 2012/13 final award notice, to ensure they do not lose their right to challenge overpayments, the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group (LITRG) has urged.
The charity’s call follows the introduction of two changes that will affect people wanting to dispute tax credits overpayments: HMRC will no longer stop recovery of overpayment while they consider a dispute, and claimants now have only three months to dispute an overpayment. Disputes could be made at any time until the time limit was introduced on 6 April.
Tax credit claimants should take extra care when checking their 2012/13 final award notice, to ensure they do not lose their right to challenge overpayments, the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group (LITRG) has urged.
The charity’s call follows the introduction of two changes that will affect people wanting to dispute tax credits overpayments: HMRC will no longer stop recovery of overpayment while they consider a dispute, and claimants now have only three months to dispute an overpayment. Disputes could be made at any time until the time limit was introduced on 6 April.
The Revenue will write off an overpayment debt if the department made a mistake and failed to meet its responsibilities but the claimant met all of his or hers.
LITRG’s chairman Anthony Thomas explained that the time limit will apply for this year only to all overpayments shown in the 2012/13 final award notice, including overpayments for earlier years.
He said, “The important thing is that if the award notice shows any overpayment and the claimant wishes to dispute it, then the dispute must be lodged within three months of the date on that final award notice.
“HMRC’s intention is that once the three-month time limit expires, claimants will lose the right to dispute overpayments from April 2003 to 5 April 2013 unless there are exceptional circumstances as to why it was not possible to dispute the claim within three months,” added Thomas.
“The fact claimants will continue to receive award notices that suggest they can dispute overpayments when the official time limit will have passed will be confusing and worrying, too. In light of this, we welcome the fact HMRC have agreed these limited relaxations of the time limits until October 2013.”
Information about the time limit can be found on RevenueBenefits.org.uk, a partnership between the LITRG and RightsNet.org.
