HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) confirmed that around 1.1 million families receiving tax credits will get their first cost-of-living payment from 2 September 2022.
The £326 payment will be paid automatically into eligible tax credit-only customers’ bank accounts between 2 and 7 September. The second payment of £324 will be issued later this year – from the autumn for Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) benefit claimants, and from the winter for tax credit-only customers.
Tax credit claimants who also receive benefits from the DWP will have already received their first cost-of-living payment from July.
Contact details for HMRC about tax credits are available on the Gov.uk website.
There will be a specific identifier when the first payment from HMRC arrives in customers’ bank accounts.
The payment reference will be: ‘CL’; followed by the customer’s National Insurance number (of two letters, six numbers, one letter); followed by ‘0001AX’.
For example, if the National Insurance number is AB123456C, the payment reference would appear as ‘CLAB123456C0001AX’.
For joint claimants, where one claimant receives Working Tax Credit and the other claimant receives Child Tax Credit, payments will be made into the same bank account as the Child Tax Credit.