Tell me about Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB)

[CarlLester]

We just got a lovely letter from Revenue Canada telling us we have been overpaid the UCCB for several years and we now have to repay $6000.

We have reported all the benefits each year and have given proof of our children's existence when they asked for it a couple of months ago as part of a "random" audit.

Anyone ever had this before? Any idea what would cause us to suddenly be in this situation? Kids are now 5 and 2 so there hasn't been a recent change in our status.

Thanks

[Drury18]

Have both you and your spouse filed income tax returns for each of the years you have been receiving the UCCB?

Are both you and your spouse Canadian Citizens/Permanent Residents or legal status to be residing in Canada?

If you are separated from the other parent, do you have a clear primary caregiver?

Rules for receiving the benefit are pretty simple:

1. Who is eligible for the universal child care benefit (UCCB)?
To receive the UCCB, all the following conditions must be met.

a) You must live with the child, and the child must be under the age of 6;

b) You must be the person who is primarily responsible for the care and upbringing of the child;

This means you are responsible for such things as supervising the child's daily activities and needs, making sure the child's medical needs are met, and arranging for child care when necessary. If there is a female parent who lives with the child, we usually consider her to be this person. However, it could be the father, a grandparent, or a guardian.

Note: You may not be considered primarily responsible for the care and upbringing of a child if the child is legally, physically or financially maintained by a child welfare agency. For more information, go to the children's special allowances (CSA) fact sheet or call 1-800-387-1193.

c) You must be a resident of Canada;

We consider you to be a resident of Canada when you establish sufficient residential ties in Canada.

d) You or your spouse or common-law partner must be:

Canadian citizen;
"permanent resident" (as defined in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act);
"protected person" (as defined in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act); or
"temporary resident" (as defined in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act) who has lived in Canada throughout the previous 18 months, and who has a valid permit in the 19th month (other than one that states "does not confer status"). If this is your situation, you should not apply before the 19th month.

The other possibility is that they haven't read the information from the random audit prior to sending you the notice of repayment. I've been through this several times with the CRA as I was previously married to an immigrant They would ask for information and then a couple weeks later send me a notice for repayment of benefits. I would pay them (DO NOT delay in paying them, they will hound you and go after wages and charge you huge amounts of interest after only a couple weeks. They did this to me over $110. If they decide you have to pay, you pay) and then they would get around to reading the information I sent to them when asked for proof and they would re-issue me a cheque a couple weeks after that saying the benefits were actually mine. In blunt honesty, the people working at CRA are not the brightest crayons in the box.

[CarlLester]

Yes, we have filed tax returns and meet all of the other eligibility requirements. The letter today says it reflects information given to them by June 27 so I am hoping it is a time delay thing and the assessment was sent out prior to them reviewing everything.

I agree with your crayon assessment as my wife has been in contact with them about this on several occasions.

[Madman]

I have to ask - did it sound 100% legit?

Are they asking for a fishy sounding bank transfer of some sort?

Just a thought.

[Drury18]

Then I would venture to say that they have not opened your proof from the previous request and so they've deemed you "past deadline" and sent out the repayment notice. I found it's around 6-8 weeks for them to open anything sent to them so if you sent proof around May 1st, they hadn't opened it yet. Around tax season, you can easily up that to 3 months.

The call centre people are not trained finance/tax professionals, they are actually no different then call centre agents that would be hired by any other company to answer phones. They look up things on a screen and if you ask something outside of what's written on the general question list, they have no clue. When I was dealing with these notices, I would wait until Case Manager's called me, have them identify the number they were calling me from with call identify (since it's usually from a "Private Number" so I got the feature so they had to enter a number) and then write that number down so if something else came up, I would directly call that manager on their direct line to get action and bypass the call centre.

Best of luck to you in getting this solved. I'm sure it shows CRA was a source of frustration for me over a good 3 year period.

[CarlLester]

Originally Posted by Madman

I have to ask - did it sound 100% legit?

Are they asking for a fishy sounding bank transfer of some sort?

Just a thought.

Yeah, it is legit. My wife has spoken to them on the phone and there is indeed a case number, etc.

[Locke]

Its likely that they either havent read the audit information that you sent them, thats fairly common.

Has there been any change in your marital status at any point in the past?

Also, when you say UCCB, that amount refers to the $100 per month per child under 6, are you lumping UCCB and CTB together in what they're reviewing because typically, if they review one they tend to review both.

[Canehdianman]

Hope this gets figured out, but as a father of a newborn, I am now hoping I get 6k worth of benefits out of it :P

[CarlLester]

Originally Posted by Locke

Its likely that they either havent read the audit information that you sent them, thats fairly common.

Has there been any change in your marital status at any point in the past?

Also, when you say UCCB, that amount refers to the $100 per month per child under 6, are you lumping UCCB and CTB together in what they're reviewing because typically, if they review one they tend to review both.

No change in marital status.

I believe I am only referring to UCCB.

Thanks for the info.

[darklord700]

$6000 is five years of payment at $100 a month. Looks like they thought your 5 year old didn't exist. I bet they haven't processed the proof you sent them and once they did it should be fine.

[squiggs96]

Originally Posted by Locke

Its likely that they either havent read the audit information that you sent them, thats fairly common.

Has there been any change in your marital status at any point in the past?

Also, when you say UCCB, that amount refers to the $100 per month per child under 6, are you lumping UCCB and CTB together in what they're reviewing because typically, if they review one they tend to review both.

I love when stuff like that happens. I had a problem with a rental property where I filed the wrong form. CRA called to say I owed a huge amount. I told them I had already spoken with someone, filed the correct form, and the amount would be reduced to nil once the paperwork was processed. They started yelling at me and said they'd put liens on my house and pay cheques. I said I knew they couldn't do that, and if he talked with the person in his office he'd find out the status.

My favourite part was when he told me I had to call the other CRA employee, and get that employee to call him. I said he could call him himself, as I sure wasn't going to do it, or he could just look up the information himself, since he's so powerful. It turns out he was just a collection guy, and had no powers. He wasn't allowed to contact anyone at CRA, and didn't have access to any files. I then lectured him about how it would be pretty hard to put all those liens on places, when he had no power. I told him if he called me again I would file harassment charges.

I still received calls from other people, but CRA took 28 months to process the paperwork. At one point they even sent me a cheque for around $30,000, which was the refund I had already received. They then showed me owing this amount. I'm not sure you should be sending out cheques for $30,000 if you think I owe you that amount. I called them, sent them the cheque back, and then they wanted to charge me interest on the $30,000 for the time it was in my possession. That went over well. After the 28 months they finally got everything through, and I think I was owed about $10 in interest revenue. The point of this long winded story is, it may take some time for everyone to get on the same page. Don't feel threatened when someone calls you demanding money.

[CarlLester]

Thanks to everyone for the comments. As of today the matter is now closed. A new letter is being sent out indicating that everything is fine and the $6000 bill has gone away.

It was indeed them not having checked the supporting documents prior to sending out the letter.

However I still find it odd that I needed to send them a SIN (issued by govt), passport (issued by govt) and other supporting docs (some issued by the govt) to prove to the govt that the children exist

[Ironhorse]

Question on the enhanced UCCB for the tax types here. We received the orginal $100/mo for our first child (now 14), but were deemed to have too high an income to qualify for the second (now 8). With the new enhanced system this year, does that mean we should be getting $60/kid/month? We haven't seen any letters or cheques; should we reapply?

[Stillman16]

Originally Posted by Ironhorse

Question on the enhanced UCCB for the tax types here. We received the orginal $100/mo for our first child (now 14), but were deemed to have too high an income to qualify for the second (now 8). With the new enhanced system this year, does that mean we should be getting $60/kid/month? We haven't seen any letters or cheques; should we reapply?

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/bnfts/uccb-puge/nhncd-eng.html

Looks like you'll begin getting checks in July, with a retro check for Jan-June. I'm in similar situation 😉