Amend Effective Date (Info)

Before making any changes to a claim, you must follow the guidance in Establish If A Change Can Be Made. This is to confirm if your change(s) can be made, or if the claim needs to be sent to a specialist team

Where a claimant requests that their claim to tax credits is paid from an earlier date, you must determine if they have grounds for backdating and if you determine that the claim can be backdated you must amend the effective date, where appropriate. If you do not have the High Level User role, you must determine the new effective date manually and then send the case to the appropriate Management Unit (MU) using the Backdating / Forward Dating Referral Stencil

You must read this guidance in conjunction with the other Backdating guidance.

In Function AMEND EFFECTIVE DATE you can

• View the current entitlement start date
   
• View the override start date and the reason why the start date was overridden
   
• View any warning messages, for example if there is a Compliance enquiry currently related to the case
   
• Amend the effective date of a claim to a date within CY or PY only

Note: When you are making a change to a PY claim, a warning message will appear asking you whether you have authority to proceed under S19, S20 or S21 or due to an appeal decision. Unless you work on a Compliance or Appeals Team, you will only be able to make the change if you have the authority to proceed after following the guidance in Establish If A Change Can Be Made

You must use Function AMEND EFFECTIVE DATE to amend the effective date when

• The effective date has been recorded incorrectly
   
• The claimant requests the effective date be amended
   
• You are notified by Compliance that an effective date needs correcting

Note: This can only be done if you have access to the High Level User role for this function

You can also forward date a claim that has been backdated incorrectly. You will not be able to move the dates in the Start and Include From fields forward in Function AMEND EFFECTIVE DATE. This must be done first in Function AMEND APPLICATION. Once the changes have been updated, you may use Function AMEND EFFECTIVE DATE to forward date the claim.

Note: You can also forward date a claim 93 days but you cannot forward date from PY into CY

Some cases will require manually backdating, such as

• Claims where you are backdating to a date older than PY
   
• Claims where the whole award is being paid manually
   
• Backdating refugee claims

Note: Under no circumstances must you use Function AMEND EFFECTIVE DATE to backdate the claim of a former asylum seeker who has been granted refugee status

This list is not exhaustive

For cases that require manual backdating, follow the guidance in Manual Calculation Of A WTC / CTC Claim Requiring Backdating To An Earlier Date