Further supplementary memorandum from
HM Revenue and Customs
TAX CREDITS
Whether or not the Department accepts the Ombudsman's
12 recommendations in her report of June 2005 and, where it accepts
a particular recommendation, what progress has been made
The Government's response to the Ombudsman's
recommendations was set out in the Paymaster General's letter
to her of 29 July. The Department has already acted on a number
of those recommendations, including:
— improved guidance and training for
contact centre staff about interim payments and the availability
of help in cases of hardship;
— improvements in the tax credits award
notice to help understanding of the reasons why overpayments may
arise; and
— planned improvements in the presentation
of information accompanying award notices to draw attention to
hardship provisions.
Other recommendations are under consideration
in the review of Code of Practice 26.
Projections of the implications for current levels
of staffing in the tax credits area if the Department were to
introduce a means of manually suspending the reclamation of an
individual customer's overpayment
The current planning assumption is that implementing
an interim process to suspend the recovery of disputed overpayments
before the full computerised solution is available could require
some 200 full-time equivalents, as an addition to current staff
levels. The impact of staffing will of course be subject to the
precise nature of the interim procedures, which are still subject
to final testing by HMRC. It will also depend on, amongst other
things, the number of disputes received by the department.
October 2005
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