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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Work capability issues and ESA  →  Thread

ESA and WTC

Lee42
forum member

Caseworker, Law Centre(NI)

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Total Posts: 24

Joined: 6 September 2010

I’m pretty sure this has come up before and I think I know the answer but I wanted to check!

Client is on WTC and falls ill. There’s no SSP entitlement and instead he gets income-related ESA. WTC should continue for 26 weeks but instead continues for 15 months in total before the problem is discovered. His ESA award was being reduced throughout and now he has to repay the TC overpayment. Is there any way of getting the ESA payments back for the period of the TC overpayment?

I know that there is some provision for the other way round (if his TC award was being reduced due to an overpayment, arguably his ESA payments can reflect the lower amount of TC) but he’s no longer entitled to TC so that will not be of help to him.

I was looking at arguing a late supersession application and asking for the date of change to be treated as the date his WTC should have ended but that doesn’t get round the fact that for those weeks his actual income included an award of WTC.

Any ideas or is he stuck!

Thanks all!

Mairi
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Welfare rights officer - Dunedin Canmore Housing Association

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Total Posts: 271

Joined: 25 June 2010

You could always request that HMRC write off the overpayment on the grounds of financial hardship and no actual loss to the public purse.

You might have to labour the point, ask for a write-off and then ask HMRC to look again at their decision when they initially refuse.  I’ve only done this for offsetting tax credit entitlement against tax credit paid but I can’t see why it wouldn’t work assuming that there will be financial hardship in paying back.

Mairi