Councils have been urged to scrap their July 31 deadline for claiming the government’s municipal tax credit.
Critics said local authorities should extend the deadline due to confusion over how residents can claim their payment, which is intended to help households fight the cost of living.
Millions of people risk missing out on the £150 cash payment if they don’t make a claim by the end of the month, but councils have been accused of applying “horribly complex” rules for file a claim.
Households that do not pay their tax bills by direct debit and therefore did not receive the money directly into their bank account, struggle with a complicated manual declaration system.
A number of municipalities have written to taxpayers that they will not receive the money directly if they do not file a claim by the end of July.
Councils, including Bath and North East Somerset, Brent and Birmingham, are among those who have already written to households with the deadline. But each municipality has its own rules about how residents can claim.
Morgan Wild, of the Citizens Advice charity, said the way the system has been set up has led to “inevitable confusion and delays and, most importantly, people who desperately need it and are not getting the support they deserve”.
In some areas, as many as a third of residents have yet to claim their money. Danielle Boxhall, of the lobbying group Taxpayers’ Alliance, described the set-up as “horribly complex”.
“Amid a cost of living crisis, the last thing struggling households need is piles of red tape. The process should have been simplified from the start,” she said. Ms Boxhall is calling for an extension of the application deadline due to the disruption.
Guildford Borough Council said one in three taxpayers eligible for the free state money had not filed a claim by the end of June. Those who typically pay by check or through PayPoint were told: apply for the £150 grant online.
In the neighboring town of Waverly, residents have received letters containing a QR code that residents must scan with their smartphone or manually enter into a search engine to access an online application form.
Meanwhile, other councils, including London authorities Southwark and Lambeth, as well as Bury and Calderdale, have asked residents to claim their money through the local post office.
When former chancellor Rishi Sunak announced the scheme to ease the rising cost of living at the start of the year, he said households would receive the money in early April. But the program is flooded with problemsthe last of which is the municipality’s different approaches on how people should apply for the money manually.
A spokesperson for the Local Government Association, which represents more than 350 councils in England and Wales, said the councils “worked hard” but said the discount scheme was “an important task and not without its challenges”. Families who have not filed a tax return before the end of the month will receive the amount withheld from municipal taxes later in the year.