Tax Credit Briefing discussion

Icequeen99

sebandie wrote: »

Hello all.
My daughter & her young son live with us & her tax credits were stopped about a year ago after she had a letter saying that she is living with someone.That someone was her brother who was on the electoral roll at our address.It took four weeks and hundreds of phone calls to the tax credit fraud dept who never seemed to answer the phone.I finally got through and it was all sorted or so we thought.
She had a letter again eight weeks ago saying exactly the same thing that she was living with a partner who was her brother who is now not on the electoral roll at our address.We have rang the two numbers given probably over 600 times in the last eight weeks but no one answers the phone and no one has phoned her.We have rang the tax credit line who say they cannot do anything but put a note on file for someone from fraud dept to ring her.We have also been to CAB who wrote and sent a letter to the dept three weeks ago.
Can anyone suggest what we can do now
Thanks
Andrew

I would suggest you contact one of the specialist tax charities if you have already been to CAB. Try https://www.litrg.org.uk.

Out of interest does your daughter share the same surname as her Brother?

IQ

sebandie

Icequeen99 wrote: »

I would suggest you contact one of the specialist tax charities if you have already been to CAB. Try https://www.litrg.org.uk.

Out of interest does your daughter share the same surname as her Brother?

IQ

Thanks will do.And yes its the same surname

sebandie

Well sent complaint over a week ago and ny daughter had a letter today.Asking to fill in a form for permission for cab to speak to them.
Considering they had the letter from cab on the 4th Dec, six weeks ago I have come to the conclusion that they are taking the p as they asked them to either resolve the issue stating that my son is Sebastian,ring my daughter and ask her or send her a letter and ask for the info they want.
I can only imagine how long this will take to resolve.

katykitten

some good news - i appealed against a tax credits refund request to the sum of £2,500 as i knew they hadnt take my pension contributions into account, 6 months later they have agreed and have reduce what i owe to £500 which is a massive relief - as they have made an error do i actually have to pay this?

amandabird170

PLEASE HELP. I notified tax credits of my reduction in child care fees at the beginning of January. As I was only receiving £100 a year towards child care I wasn't expecting any drastic change in my tax credits. However, I received my award notice today and my payments have dropped by £140 a month.
My Childccare element of working tax credit has reduced, which I was expecting but my Child tax credit element has also been reduced. I was NOT expecting this to change, I thought it would just be the Childccare element of working tax credit.
I've phoned them but they say it's correct as Childccare effects both parts. I'm not so sure, does anyone else know if this is right?
Thanks in advance!

Grand_Benders

Hi. This is a really basic question. Does the amount of income mean Gross or Net income? (ie, before or after tax has been deducted from my OH pay?) And am I right in thinking they don't count the first £2,500, so if that is deducted and we're below the threshold, we may be eligible to claim WTC? (My job is about to be redundant)

Icequeen99

Grand_Benders wrote: »

Hi. This is a really basic question. Does the amount of income mean Gross or Net income? (ie, before or after tax has been deducted from my OH pay?) And am I right in thinking they don't count the first £2,500, so if that is deducted and we're below the threshold, we may be eligible to claim WTC? (My job is about to be redundant)

It is gross income for tax credits.

There is no such thing as not counting the first 2,500. You are probably getting confused with them disregarding the first 2,500 of a fall in income between years if your income goes down or disregarding the first 5,000 if your income rises.

IQ

KevinG

Icequeen99 wrote: »

It is gross income for tax credits.

Technically, it is taxable income, not gross income. There are various deductions that can be made, basically the same deductions as would apply when calculating your income tax, e.g. pension contributions, gift aid payments.

Icequeen99

KevinG wrote: »

Technically, it is taxable income, not gross income. There are various deductions that can be made, basically the same deductions as would apply when calculating your income tax, e.g. pension contributions, gift aid payments.

I was using the same term as the OP to mean before or after tax.

But it isn't taxable income either. For example, income-based jobseeker's allowance is taxable but it isn't counted as income for tax credits purposes.

IQ

KevinG

Icequeen99 wrote: »

But it isn't taxable income either. For example, income-based jobseeker's allowance is taxable but it isn't counted as income for tax credits purposes.

I thought there might be some exceptions, looking into it it appears that all Jobseekers' Allowance is taxable, but only contribution-based JSA has to be included for Tax Credits assessment purposes. But Tax Credits are taken into account when assessing income-based JSA entitlement, so it's all a bit of a mess. It would be nice to think that the new Universal Credit system would sort all this out but I'm not holding my breath.