In this section:
- Checking your tax credits award notice
- How Child Benefit, tax credits and Guardian's Allowance are paid
- When can you expect your first tax credits payment?
- Reasons why your tax credits might go down or stop
- You've been overpaid tax credits - how did this happen?
Reasons why your tax credits might go down or stop
There could be a number of reasons why your tax credit payments go down or stop. It may be for the simple reason that your circumstances have changed and we've changed the amount we're paying you.
Changes in your payments
The most common reasons why your payments may have gone down or stopped are:
- a child reaches 16 but you haven't told us they're staying in education or training
- your award notice shows you've been overpaid - and we've started to collect back the money
- you've changed your bank account but not told us
- you haven't renewed your tax credits
- your income has gone up by more than £25,000, and so your tax credit payments have gone down
The reasons are explained in more detail below.
A child reaches 16
If your child is now over the age of 16, your Child Tax Credit payments for them may have stopped because we didn't know they're staying on in full-time education or are doing an approved training course. It's very important to tell us these details - otherwise your payments for that child will stop on 31 August after their 16th birthday.
Your child reaches 16 - are you still entitled to tax credits?
Your award notice shows you've been overpaid
You'll get an award notice if your tax credits payments change. This may say that your payments are going down or stopping altogether because we've paid you too much. This can happen if you haven't told us about a change in circumstance or your income has gone up. If your payments have stopped because you no longer qualify for tax credits, we'll ask you to make a direct payment to pay back any outstanding overpayment.
You've been overpaid tax credits - how did this happen?
You've changed your bank account
If you've changed your bank or building society account details recently and haven't told us, then your payment will have been sent to your old account. You need to tell us your new account details as soon as possible so that you can get future payments paid to your correct account.
Find out which changes in circumstance you need to report by when
You haven't renewed your tax credits
We ask you to renew your tax credits after the end of each year so that we can make sure we have paid you the right amount of tax credits for the previous tax year and that we are paying you the right amount for the current tax year.
We send you a renewal pack, which you must usually complete by 31 July. If you don't renew your tax credits, your payments will stop and you may have to pay back any payments you have received since 6 April as well as any overpayments.
Why your tax credits claim has to be renewed
Your income has gone up by more than £25,000
If your income for the current tax year is expected to be more than £25,000 higher than income for the last year, you may get less tax credits.
If you expect your income for the current year to be no more than £25,000 higher than your income for the last year, it will make no difference to the amount of tax credits you will receive for the current year. However it's still a good idea to let us know about the change as the increased income will be taken into account:
- in the following year
- for the payments made to you after April, but before you've renewed your claim
If you don't tell us about a change in income, you may not be getting all the money you are entitled to, or you could be building up an overpayment that you have to pay back.
Changes in income and tax credits
Contact us
You can contact our Tax Credit Helpline on Tel 0845 300 3900 or textphone 0845 300 3909 (open from 8.00 am to 8.00 pm, seven days a week except Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and New Year's Day).
More useful links
How to avoid being paid too much or not enough tax credits
