Secondary hardship

If a claimant's regular tax credits payments have been reduced they may feel that this is causing their household hardship. The reduction could have been caused by

• An in-year recovery in the case of a notional overpayment

• Recovery of an overpayment from a previous award period (cross-year recovery)

Or

• A combination of both of the above

The hardship claim will be considered and, if appropriate, a manual adjustment to increase the claimant's payments may be made.

Following initial consideration of the hardship claim, no matter what the outcome, the claimant may still maintain that the reduction in tax credits payments is causing hardship. This is known as secondary hardship