Treasury - Sixth Report
Here you can browse the report together with the Proceedings of the Committee. The published report was ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 23 May 2006.
Contents
Terms of Reference
Summary
1 Introduction
Part A: Current issues
2 Overpayments
of tax credits
Meaning of "overpayments"
Extent of income volatility amongst low-income
families
HMRC's account of causes of overpayments
3 Recovery
of overpayments
Concerns about operation of recovery process
A 'pause' before recovery commences
Application of the reasonableness test
Substance of the reasonableness test
Calls for an independent right of appeal
Comparable right of appeal in the benefit
regime
Appealing disputed overpayments to the Adjudicator
4 Fraud, error
and organised crime
Levels of claimant error and fraud
Recent incidences of organised fraud
Paymaster General's awareness of fraud
Levels of staffing in compliance
Part B: Looking forward
5 Package
of reforms announced in PBR
Costing the package of reforms
Likely revenue costs associated with reforms
Likely revenue yields associated with reforms
Assessing the PBR reforms
Effect of increased disregard on claimants
Potential for abuse of increased disregard
6 Improving
HMRC's service to claimants
Continuing challenge of overpayments
HMRC's capacity to deliver
Award notices, calculations and playback
Dealing with complex cases
Handling disputed overpayments
Level of service provided to Northern Ireland
7 Availability
of information about tax credits regime as a whole
Adequacy of management information
8 Design of
the tax credits regime
Refining the design of new tax credits
Childcare element of the working tax credit
Family element of the child tax credit
A regime of fixed awards?
9 Conclusion
Conclusions and recommendations
Annex: Background to new tax credits regime
Formal minutes of the Treasury Sub-Committee
Formal minutes of the Treasury Committee
List of Witnesses
List of written evidence
List of Reports from the Treasury Committee
during the current Parliament
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
WRITTEN EVIDENCE
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