Can someone jog my memory. If WTC was overpaid because entitlement ended while a claimant was receiving payments via their employer and there was a several week delay before the payments ended, was the overpayment normally recoverable?

I'm a bit confused by this. Are you saying that your client continued to receive WTC payments from an employer he no longer worked for? I suppose it's possible but I can't quite see it.

If that is what happened I think they would be recoverable if the client failed to tell HMRC (or was it Inland Revenue then) that he/she had stopped work.

Chris, Thank you for your reply. My client continued to work for the employer but entitlement ended following Annual Review in which client declared a significant increase in actual previous year income by comparison with the income figure on which provisional payments had been based.

Employers used to receive a TC702 stop notice which told them to end tax credit payments. From what I recall these gave the employer 42 days to end payments, so potentially a 6 week overpayment accrued.

Also there were times when HMRC just didn't send the start/stop notice thus meaning the employer kept paying.

Did the employer keep paying? - it would probably be worth trying to find out if it was the 42 day period that caused the problem or whether HMRC didn't issue a stop notice.

In this case presumably entitlement didn't actually end, but the income increased to produce a nil award?

Victoria