Establishing debt

Debts must be established in SWIFTT. This creates a record in SWIFTT of the action taken to establish the debt - i.e. dates, rates of payment, benefit type and reason.

Debts are established for the current and previous tax years at the net amount not the gross amount of taxable benefits.

All debts established on or after 26/09/2002 must be checked against the criteria of regulation 208 to determine if the debt is recoverable.

All debts, regardless of the status of the benefit i.e. current, at cancellation or post cancellation, must be assessed against regulation 208 before recovery action commences.

For more information see:

Any debt established before 26/09/02 that is the result of "office error" can only be provisionally written off.

Debts established before 26/09/02 can only be considered for provisional write-off irrespective of when you are reviewing the debt.

Debt created by a processing mistake is termed 'accidental debt' to distinguish it from situations of genuine overpayment where the client received benefit payments they were not entitled to.

There is an administrative process that must be followed to correct accidental debt.