Will a tax refund affect our Universal Credit payment?

[nonamemummy]

My partner is due quite a bit of money back from overpaid tax. Does anyone know if this will affect our universal credit payment please?

I’m pretty sure it does as they would have made previous payments based on your income so they have overpaid.

@ItWasntMyFault That’s what I’m thinking. I’d just like to know if it would only affect that one months payment

I bloody hope so!

Is this a record for anti universal credit vitriol starting?

Yes of course it will. How many months will depend on the size of the refund.

Yes indeed, it's so annoying. And oh isn't their username so horribly accurate, in this instance.. Why is everyone always punching down.

Perhaps have a look at the billionaire tax avoiders affecting the UK, and redirect your ire @Spirallingdownwards

No it is a comment about how a benefit that is based on income should be repaid if the income was actually higher than when the UC assessment was made and therefore the claimant wasn't entitled to the amount paid.

It isn't ire. And yes billionaire tax dodgers should pay taxes due and at a proper rate.
However in this case the claimant has been overpaid and therefore it is reasonable to hope that they have to repay that overpayment.

No benefit bashing at all asking for the correct amounts to be paid to and by everyone.

Yes it does, but only the month in which you receive it as it is treated as income. It will only affect future months if it increases your capital above £6k in which case it will alter the deduction for capital/savings.

Although as an aside, I'm pretty sure HMRC don't tell UC in the same way they report your earnings, so you need to declare it on your online account. If you don't, and they do a review down the line and find you didn't declare it, they'll reclaim what you owe and fine you

The flip side though is people like me who are also due a tax rebate, and despite around 80/90% of that tax being paid before I had to claim UC (following some life altering circumstances outside my control), the tax rebate I will receive this year will be considered by UC as if I had earned all of that money while receiving UC, whereas if I'd been taxed correctly in the first place, I would have been financially better off since I would have got 100% of the wages due to me at the time rather than it being offset against benefits I didn't get.

But I'm sure the few hundred quid will be much better spent by the government than a new single mum of 2 disabled children who's trying to juggle raising kids with trying to keep hold of her job.

It is still fair though for people to only receive benefits to which they are entitled and not a higher amount.

If you have the tax refund that month then you won’t need the UC so no need to worry.

Totally. I'm not expecting anyone to get more benefits than they are entitled to, and I fully support rebates being accounted for. It's just a shame they can't do it by adjusting earnings to the correct amount and recalculating what was due rather than just blanket offsetting it as income .

Because for some, they could have earned the entire rebate before making a claim, and if they happen to have opened a claim before a rebate is paid, it gets deducted anyway

Yes, of course. Either keep it in savings or use it to live off. Keep uc updated and when you are under the threshold your uc payments will restart.

Possibly not, if it was due to an error by them rather than you. I had Carer’s Allowance wrongly deducted from my UC even though I wasn’t claiming CA at the time. ( I had previously claimed CA but it then stopped because my earnings were over the threshold but UC kept deducting it no matter how many times I informed both UC and CA that I wasn’t getting it). Eventually, I got the money repaid to me by UC by which time it amounted to a couple of thousand. I asked specifically whether that would count against me in terms of savings and was told that it would be disregarded for a period of time (think it was 1 year).

That's not the same as a tax rebate. Backdated benefits are discounted, but tax rebates don't follow the same rules