Overpayment

Hi My employer is stating I was overpaid whilst on maternity as they never put me down as going in maternity leave. They are staying that spring £12000 needs to be repaid. We receive universal credit. Due to the payment error this means we will be left short as such because we would have had the additional funds from UC. (We would be owed about £8000 from universal credit) Employer has refused to send an amendment to Hmrc of what I should have be paid so that uc can change the payments their end and help with the overpayment so it can be repaid. They said they can’t do this as it would be “fraudulent”. I have asked them to send the letter and information they sent me but they have still refused. Is there a way for me to send through the letter and overpayment summary and actual/should have been payment summary so that this can be changed. This also means I have paid a full year of tex and national insurance when I should not of. So my contributions are incorrect. Thank you for your help.

Hi s_j_R,

We wouldnt be able to advise on this.
You would need to speak to UC and explain the situation to them.
The employer must report what you were actually paid, if you then pay this back then you would speak to personal tax on 0300 200 3300 re overpaid tax etc.
However I'm not sure if they would be able to amend the income reported.

Thank you.

Hi s_j_R We often have cases where overpayments occur due to late notification of maternity and our organisation would recalculate the pay that should have been received for that period and put the adjustments through the payroll as if you met the minimum earning/length of service requirements you would be entitled to Statutory Maternity Pay and they would be entitled to claim 92% of that back from HMRC so that would need to be reported to HMRC. If the overpayment occurred in a prior year we would process that as a prior year adjustment and send an amended FPS to HMRC and we would also issue you a replacement P60 that held the correct year to date earnings for that tax year and detail the SMP you were due.