Providing Claimants With Information On Their Overpayments (Info)

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When an award is finalised, a Finalised Award Notice is sent to the claimant(s). This will include information about whether the award was

• Overpaid

• Underpaid

Or

• Balanced

If the claimant has an overpayment and they have a continuing award, the overpayment will be recovered from their new award at a rate of 10%, 25% or 100%. This is called cross year recovery.

Where a claimant has a notional overpayment, in year adjustments are made at the same rates.

If the claimant has an overpayment, but there is no continuing award for that family then the recovery method will be direct. This means that 30 days after the Finalised Award Notice has been issued, a form TC610 Notice to Pay (with a payslip) will be issued to the claimant for them to use to make the repayment within 30 days.

Claimants may write to the TCO enquiring about what is happening with or how they can repay their overpayment for tax credits. Use this guidance to give the claimant an update on their overpayment.

Any written queries received regarding overpayments must be sent to the relevant Overpayment Team . Your manager will be able to provide you with this information

Any queries received concerning a secure or sensitive case must be sent to

• TCO Preston 11 & 12

Or

• TCO (NI) A & B

In order to provide a claimant with details about their overpayment, use Function VIEW OVERPAYMENT. Within this function you will see the

• Claimant’s name and NINO

• Award period start and end dates

• Original and latest amount of the overpayment, with a breakdown at WTC / CTC level

Note:The latest amount will be blank for in year overpayments

• Issue date of the Notice to Pay, if applicable

• Recovery status

And

• Reason for the suspension of the overpayment, if applicable

To advise the claimant, you must check the recovery stage. These are

• ‘Direct Pre Notice to Pay’ – Form TC610 Notice to Pay has not yet been issued

• ‘Direct Post Notice to Pay’ – Form TC610 Notice to Pay has been issued

• ‘Informal Arrangement’ – The date the claimant has to repay an overpayment has been extended by another 30 days

• ‘Cleared’ – The overpayment has been cleared

• ‘ In Year’ – The claimant has a current year overpayment which will be recovered by in year adjustment

• ‘Suspended’ – The overpayment recovery has been suspended

• ‘Local Recovery’ or ‘Local Recovery Enforcement (ENF)’ – The overpayment is being dealt with by the Local Recovery Office and if ENF they are taking enforcement action

• ‘Cross Year Recovery’ – Any overpayment is being recovered cross year