Reclaim overpaid council tax

We believe this is a good guide because:

• If you moved within the same local authority area, it's more likely the council would have spotted your old account was in credit and refunded you/reduced your bill at your new address – whereas you're more likely to be owed if you left the area, especially if you didn't leave a forwarding address. 
  
  
• Eight out of 10 councils told us they try to refund credit wherever possible, and if your council has your direct debit details, this should have been straightforward. But the vast majority of councils that do try to refund credit told us they can't if you paid by any method other than direct debit – eg, if you paid by cash, standing order or cheque.

However, to be clear, there will be exceptions – some who have moved within local authorities and/or paid by direct debit WILL be owed too. If that's you, you'll need to weigh up whether it's worth contacting your council anyway.      

Quick questions

• Option 1. Check if your old council offers an EASY online claims form. The councils we spoke to told us this is the best way to find out if you're owed, and for some it will be the simplest way. Just google "[council name] council tax refund form" – we found that half the time this'll take you to an online claims form, and if not it should take you to a page explaining your council's process.
  
  This won't be best for everyone though. Many councils' forms require you to have your old council tax reference number, and some forms we've seen are long – if either of these is a problem, try the option below instead. But the advantage of doing it this way is that if you find you ARE owed, you won't need to do anything else to reclaim. 
  
  
• Option 2. Call or email your council. If there's no online form, you don't have enough details or the form's off-puttingly long, you can try calling, emailing or live chatting with your council instead. (You can check contact details on Gov.uk.)
  
  We asked 10 of the MSE team to phone their old council, and found it was usually straightforward to check if they were owed money. Usually they just had to give their name and old address – in some cases, they were asked security questions too. 
  
  Some, however, struggled to get through automated phone menus, and in one case an automated phone system asked for a council tax reference number. So it may be easier to email or even live chat with your council instead.
  
  While this may seem the more straightforward option, it's worth noting if you do find you're owed cash, you'll likely then have to fill in a form to reclaim it (or at least give further details).

Quick questions

Of course, there is a wide range of factors behind the different amounts held by councils. Larger councils are naturally likely to have more unclaimed credit, and there will be differences too because some councils' records date back to 1993, and others are more recent. Some also didn't include accounts owing less than a certain amount – usually £5 – when giving us figures.