MSE News: Families must prepare for tax credits cut

jellyhead wrote: »

I know, the company car thing is daft - as if you'd spend thousands per year on a car if the company didn't provide one :eek: My husband cycled to work before they gave him a car :rotfl:

I'm not claiming poverty - the tax credits pay for swimming lessons rather than bread and milk - but the idea that people earning less than 30k would spend more than 5k on a car is mad, they'd have an old banger rather than a brand new car, surely.

andrew-b wrote: »

I'd just like to share my experience of these changes.

Back in November/December we received a letter saying the minimum working hours rules for WTC were changing for couples with children.
We have young baby (1 in less than a couple of weeks), wife works 20hours (she reduced hours so it wasn't such a struggle for me looking after baby whilst she worked - i had missed that the rules were changing else she would have asked to reduce her hours to 24 hours). I don't work and claim DLA. The new rules say that couples with children must work a minimum 24 hours between them but there is an exception for couples with children where one of the couple is not working and incapacitated/in hospital/in prison where the other person only has to work 16 hours. There is also an exception for couples with children where one person is working and claiming the disability element that again only requires the 16 hours. And an exception for couples with children where a person is 60 again only needs to work 16 hours. It's so complicated now!

Certain disability benefits including DLA (what rate of care and mobility is irrelevant for tax credit purposes) are used to define whether someone is incapacitated.

The actual rules defining "incapacitated" to be used are 13 parts 4-8 of the tax credit regulations which were previously used to define disability relevant to the child care part of tax credits. I have actually pieced together a document with the changes in so i could understand my entitlement.

So i phoned up the tax credits helpline back in december because i had never needed to inform them i was claiming DLA before as it was never relevant to my claim until now as i wasn't working and i wasnt on DLA when we first claimed tax credits.

The first person i spoke to couldn't understand the new rules at all and i ended up in an argument (not my suggested approach but despite being a mild mannered person i was fuming!) and I slammed the phone down. I phoned again after calming down and again explained the rules...again they didn't seem to understand the rules. I guess we can't really blame them as the whole system is overly complicated! Anyway they asked when i'd been on DLA from and what parts i was getting and said they would pass them onto the compliance department who supposedly would sort things out.

A week or so later the compliance department wrote to me saying I had asked to claim the disability element and wasn't entitled to it. That wasn't what i asked at all. For various reasons i never chased it and just assumed they would have noted i was on DLA.

So this week i phoned tax credits helpline again. They told me that our WTC would stop but CTC continue! So again i had to explain all the rules. The person i spoke to didn't seem to understand and was saying if i wanted to appeal to write in. So i said "i need to speak to your manager". The manager spent a long time with me on the phone. I'm not convinced he fully understood the rules as i explained them to him and referenced the letter i had been sent last year and the tax credit website regards the 2012 changes. He told me to phone back the compliance department...which i did yesterday.

Compliance department answered phone and said we only deal with the disability element so i explained i'd been told to call by the manager the day before who had put notes on my account. Again i had to explain all the new rule changes and again i got the impression that they hadn't quite grasped what the changes were.

They went away and read the notes and when they came back seemed more conversant with the rules (or at least agreed with my explanation) and said they'd added that i got DLA to the notes and that i was now classed as incapacitated so our WTC would continue. I will believe it when i see it but hopefully for us it's sorted now.

I did comment to them that it seemed a ridiculous way of handling things. Surely for us it should have been a simple case of tell them i get DLA and job done..not the jumping through hoops i had to endure.

So anyone in a similar situation i would strongly advise you to find exactly how the changes affect you and fully understand the rules before you try to phone the tax credit helpline! If your disabled make sure they know what disability benefits your on and that it is actually noted on your account!

Hope that helps someone!