HM Revenue and Customs

2. Ms N complains in January 2012 HMRC wrongly decided she was not entitled to the tax credits she had been receiving. She also complains HMRC is recovering a tax credit overpayment despite its decision to cancel this debt on 8 March 2012.

3. Ms N says because of HMRC’s actions it is trying to recover £26,000 in tax credit overpayments and imposed a £7,000 fine. She says this has led to bailiffs visiting her home, which upset her and her family. She says what happened has been very stressful and contributed to a mental breakdown at work, after which she was signed off for six months.

4. As an outcome to her complaint, Ms N would like HMRC to review its decisions to recover the tax credits and impose a penalty. She would also like compensation for the emotional impact of what happened.

5. Ms N has a long history of receiving tax credits from HMRC. Tax credits are a benefit calculated based on the recipient’s individual circumstances. HMRC expects people to let it know when these circumstances change so payments remain accurate. Sometimes HMRC will pay someone too much money, and this is called an overpayment. In these situations, HMRC will treat this overpayment as a debt and try to get it back.

8. The Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967 is the law that sets out what we can and cannot look at. It says a person needs to make their complaint to an MP within a year of becoming aware of the problem. We cannot investigate complaints brought to an MP after one year unless we think there is a good reason to do so. We have discussed this with Ms N to understand why she could not complain sooner.

9. We consider Ms N knew about the problems with HMRC’s overpayment in January 2012 when it sent her a summary of her tax credit payments. She learned about its decision to recover debt in September 2014 when it sent her a letter demanding the money. This means she should have complained to an MP by January 2013 and September 2015 respectively. In the end, Ms N complained to an MP about both problems in March 2022. This means the complaint is outside our time limit.

10. We discussed this delay with Ms N. She recalled in 2015 she spoke to her previous MP about her problems with HMRC. She says following this conversation she complained to us but cannot remember anything beyond that.

11. We have asked Ms N for documentary evidence of her account but, despite looking, she has been unable to provide it. We cannot find any records on our systems showing Ms N has approached us before.

12. We understand Ms N claims to have approached her MP earlier, but this alone is not strong enough evidence to demonstrate they discussed the complaint.

13. If Ms N did approach her MP with a complaint, it is likely either HMRC or the AO would have records of this. We have seen HMRC’s log of contact with Ms N since 2012 and there is no reference to contact from an MP. The AO’s report makes no mention of her contacting her MP sooner.

14. We have looked at the documentary evidence available. We have balanced it against Ms N’s account and the lack of corroborating evidence. Based on this, we consider it more likely than not she approached her MP on 10 March 2022. This is outside the time limit allowed in legislation, and we have not seen anything to suggest she could not have approached her MP sooner.

15. We understand the requirement people should approach an MP before complaining to us is not common knowledge. However, we know the AO’s report from October 2020 advised Ms N she should follow this process if she remained unhappy.

16. There is nothing to suggest Ms N could not have complained to the AO at the time she learned about the problems. If she had done so, it would have given its advice much sooner and possibly avoided such a delay. However, there is also a significant gap between when it did inform her of this and when Ms N complained to her MP. If she had complained to her MP when the AO mentioned this to her, we might have been able to consider this differently. Having considered all the relevant information, we have decided not to put our time limit to one side.

1. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has carefully considered Ms N’s complaint about HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). It falls outside our time limit and we have decided not to put the time limit to one side. While we will not be taking further action, we do understand how significantly Ms N has been affected by what happened. Our decision does not downplay the upset and stress she has experienced.