WTC technicality HELP!

CHESHIRE_LASS_2

Question

If your normal working hours are temporarily reduced to below 30 hours should you still be entitiled to working tax credits?

My husbands normal working hours are 37 but the company put everyone on a 3 day week rather than make people redundant. I notified the tax credit people and they said because he was working 24 hours we weren't entitled to tax credits.
They have also sent us a letter saying we have been overpaid.

I looked on the tax aid website and found this:

You count the number of hours of work that you normally perform under your contract of service and including any overtime.

So should we still have got tax credits and were we entitled to an increased rate as our income had been reduced?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

bestpud

Do you have children?

flea72

For tax credit purposes, a change in working hours for more than 4wks is classed as a permanent change. So how long has he/will be, on short-time for?

there is an additional payment for people who work over 30hrs, so now his hours have dropped this will be taken away. If you have children then your joint working hours can be totalled to get your over this 30hrs rule, but if you dont have children, you both have to be working over 30hrs to claim it

As for the overpayment, i cant see how this could have happened as we are only 3m into this tax year. Did you notify tax credits immediately of the change in circumstances?

Flea

bestpud

flea72 wrote: »

For tax credit purposes, a change in working hours for more than 4wks is classed as a permanent change. So how long has he/will be, on short-time for?

there is an additional payment for people who work over 30hrs, so now his hours have dropped this will be taken away. If you have children then your joint working hours can be totalled to get your over this 30hrs rule, but if you dont have children, you both have to be working over 30hrs to claim it

As for the overpayment, i cant see how this could have happened as we are only 3m into this tax year. Did you notify tax credits immediately of the change in circumstances?

Flea

Only one parent needs to be working 16 hours or more if the have children. In that case, they'd lose the 30 hour bonus but not their entitlement per se.