Child Tax Credits

Child Tax Credits

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We have many clients who engage us for assistance with CTC/WTC renewals, but that engagement is limited to assisting with the annual declaration of income. Additional assistance is provided as and when individually instructed (in practice this typically involves reviewing the award, but often well after 30 days following the award notice).

We have deliberately avoided accepting responsibility for notifying the CTC office of changes in circumstances that require immediate notification, as we are not confident that our clients will keep us informed in good time to take the necessary action.

The whole system is so complex that whatever our internal arrangements we would expect some problems to arise, and one problem that seems to arise with monotonous regularity is a case in which a child reaches the age of 16, remains in full time education, and CTC claim is stopped because the CTC office has not been positively informed of continuing education. This problem comes to our notice after 30 days have elapsed following the award notice and is technically out of time for appeal, with a new claim only being backdated by up to 3 months.

I should be interested to know whether others have success in appealing under similar situations (in order to get the order backdated without the 3 month cut-off).

I have considerable sympathy with the claimants in these cases: They are abjured to notify the office of "changes in circumstances". The child was in education both before and after the 16th birthday and it is understandable that a claimant might regard this as NOT a change in circumstances.

I should be interested to know where it says in the regulations that notification of continued education is a reportable requirement. Help?

Thanks

Clint Westwood

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