I have a client who is 68, his wife is 45 - she works and receives WTC of £11 per week. Based on their income, (and including housing costs), they are entitled to Pension Credit of £28, and full CTB.

As a Pension Credit claimant they will be entitled to their maximum WTC (£76 per week), however - this will result in their income being too high to receive PC... and if they are not paid PC, they wont be entitled to their maximum WTC....

I have advised my client to apply for PC and CTB, but am unsure what will happen next in practice. Will they be paid their maximum WTC and retain some sort of underlying entitlement to PC and CTB? or will they be paid the PC and still just their standard WTC?

Has anyone dealt with a similar case? Any ideas?

We pointed this anomaly out to both DWP and HMRC over a year ago. We have been told that they are now working on a solution.

If you would like to volunteer your client's details, appropriately anonymised, to me through the contact page of www.litrg.org.uk I will see it gets to where it needs to on the policy side. They always like "real examples".

The simplest thing for your client to do is not to report that they are getting Pension Credit until the end of the tax year. This avoids the messy circular problem. The problem will arise again when sorting out their awards in the new tax year but perhaps by then they will have this solution. Its not that difficult a problem to solve so I've no idea why it has taken so long. I'll sort it out for them for a pint of Jospeh Holts and a bag of nuts.

I bet southern jessies have never tried a Joe Holts, Damien

Can I resurrect this issue? Did anyone find a definitive answer?

Client's husband gets a small amount of PC, and she should be passported to full WTC; but she knows (cos its happened before) that getting it will start the roundabout off again...

A pint of Joe Holts (or Pale Rider, or Black Sheep, or...) to anyone who's come up with the solution.

Anyone?

Is it still a case of jumping on and off the merry-go-round?

As John said above we raised this issue with HMRC over a year ago. It has also been raised recently through the Tax Credit Consultation group & sub group so the HMRC Policy team are aware of the problem and have been for some time.

There is a further sub group meeting (dealing with passporting issues) where I intend to press for an update next month. In the past we have struggled to back up our technical argument due to lack of real case examples....so if you would be prepared to send your recent examples to me before the next meeting (anonymous of course) that would be a great help and much more persuasive than a pure technical argument in convincing HMRC that it really does happen to claimants.


My email address is victoriatodd28@yahoo.co.uk

Thanks
Victoria