yet another tax credit overpayment fiasco

loisamelia

OMG where do i start- this is going to be long i warn you now

about 3 years ago i rang child tax credit"helpline" to let them know a change in my income. the dozy muppet on the other end of the line put my partners income to zero instead of mine and they over paid us by £6000 :eek: it took them and age to sort it all out. i appealed against having to pay it back but lost so they are taking it out of our tax credits each month

anyway a few weeks ago i rang to give them my income for the year as i had been self employed until 31st march and wanted to tell them what i had earned for the year. instead of changing my income they changed my partners-again, even though i told the person i was speaking to very categorically to leave his income alone. they have now given us more than £5000 making a total debt to them of over £10,000. they are currently taking this back at a rate of £500 a year so it is going to take a while to pay it all back.

i have opened a savings account to put it all in so at least i can earn some interest on it :cool: . should i bother to appeal and if so are there any tips anyone can give me as i obviously didn't do it too well last time

TIA Lois x

hjb123

Sounds alot to be overpaid by! I guess you are being very sensible in putting it in a savings account and earning interest on it - plus you arent as tempted to spend it! You may be best off getting some advice from your local Citizens Advice Bureau who will be able to advise the best options available for you.

It may also be worth you looking at the following links about overpayments - the first one is from the citizens advice website!
http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/b_ove...tax_credits.pdf
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/ntcm.../ntc0780310.htm


There was other threads on here recently about overpayments of tax credits:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com...d.html?t=185399
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=186591

DazzerG

You can always give back the overpaid amount.

This will be 'added' back to your award, and your payments would be returned back to normal.

krisskross

Did they not send an award notice telling you what figures the amount being paid was based on? I think the onus is on you to check this notice carefully and report any errors otherwise any overpayment will be down to you.
Good on you for saving it though, but I think I would pay it straight back as there will be a temptation to spend it. At just £500 a year to pay it back that is 20 years, you probably won't be claiming CTC then if it still exists which i doubt very much.

loisamelia

the overpayment resulted from an error on their part when i rang to give a change of circumstances. they changed my partners income not mine.
i always ring and tell them about changes in our circumstances but this is where the trouble happens as they always do something wrong and change the wrong details
i always ring to tell them of any problems they have created but it takes them ages to sort it out. Last time it took them nearly a year to ask for the whole amount we had been overpaid by, by which time we had spent it

DazzerG

The problem is that the onus is on you to prove that you didnt know that you had been overpaid.....and if you did, why did you spend it?

Your final entitlement isnt calculated until you complete the annual declaration with your Actual income, this could be 31 Jan of the following year if you're a bit slow.

fannyadams

This is EXACTLY what happened to me
I rang to tell them I as going on maternity leave and that I would be getting Maternity Allowance and they changed my income to £0. when I 'found' the money in my account I rang them and they actually told me to "put it into a high interest account and they wouls write to me to tell me how to give it back". I asked them if they wanted a cheque and she said no coz "If it came here there's no guarentee that it would make it to the right department!" I was amazed but even more amazed when I got anothe letter 2 months later saysing they'd done their maths and I could keep the money - so I spent it on wiring and heating my house!
then I got a letter just after I'd gone back to work to say they'd made a mistake and were stopping my CTC altogether. Fan-*****-tastic I thought back to work Ds#2 in nursery and DS#1 at childminder and me driving 90 miles a day to work and back. 80% of my salary going on childcare I needed that money to feed my family.
I am on my 4th appeal - i just keep going back to them sendign them the same letters and the same photocopies of the same things voer and over agian - I'm hoping they'll just get sick of me and give in and then I'll get my money proper. In the meantime I have moved to a job closer to home and DS#2 is nearly 2 so the fees come down next month. Busy Bees voucher from work accepted by nursery and after school club so... I'll soon be able to take the kids on holiday. Maybe next year.

donnalove

DazzerG wrote:

The problem is that the onus is on you to prove that you didnt know that you had been overpaid.....and if you did, why did you spend it?

Your final entitlement isnt calculated until you complete the annual declaration with your Actual income, this could be 31 Jan of the following year if you're a bit slow.

its ok saying the onus is on us, but when we tell them they have made a mistake it is up to them to correct it.But everytime you ring them it sets off another award notice and that is why overpayment was so high.
It is there fault if they failed to correct the overpayment,i kept telling them they didn't listen so at the end of the day it is there fault.

Like you loisamelia we are on our 4th appeal but this time we have our mp involved.
The overpayments will be about recovered by the time we get anywhere but even so i will still carry on appealing as it was there fault for not doing there job properly

donnalove
xx

krisskross

donnalove wrote:

its ok saying the onus is on us, but when we tell them they have made a mistake it is up to them to correct it.But everytime you ring them it sets off another award notice and that is why overpayment was so high.
It is there fault if they failed to correct the overpayment,i kept telling them they didn't listen so at the end of the day it is there fault.



donnalove
xx

But if you know you are being overpaid then you also know that eventually you will have to pay it back. I didn't inform the IR of additional pension cash I was receiving and thus underpaid income tax.....it was reclaimed at £40 a month throughout the next tax year. No point in my complaining, I owed it and they took it back.

donnalove

krisskross wrote:

But if you know you are being overpaid then you also know that eventually you will have to pay it back. I didn't inform the IR of additional pension cash I was receiving and thus underpaid income tax.....it was reclaimed at £40 a month throughout the next tax year. No point in my complaining, I owed it and they took it back.

yes we know that,(but you say you didn't inform them we did) . when you ring them the very first day you are overpaid and tell them everything is wrong they should correct it NOT send more award notices in the post,putting the same in bank that has just gone in.If it was dealt with when you ring up(by the way they were telling me it was correct),you wouldnt have the problem.But then everytime you rang up it generated more award notices and more payments.In my circumstances they have written off 1 part of the overpayment (£1586) that was generated by the same info that the wtc overpayment was made. so how come they can say 1 is there fault and not the other.they are now saying my hubbies income wasn't on the form and we should have noticed but its laughable as i have all the awards and hubbies income is on all of them.but we did tell them the amount they were paying was wrong as hubby wasn't entitled to wtc.
If you tell them payments are incorrect and keep telling them and they fail to correct there mistake you dont have to pay it back.

loisamelia

also another problem with rigning to tell them they have made a mistake is that they tell you they cant do anything about it for x number of weeks. this resulted in my partner being paid more wtc that he wasnt entitled to in his wages and adding more to our debt.
so, is it worth appealing again?i have only appealed once and got nowhere.
btw they didnt actually write and tel me my appeal was unsuccessful. i just got one of those change of circumstances letters even though i hadnt rung to tell them anything new for months. it took 2 phone calls for someone to notice that it was written on my records that the appeal had been turned down. is that common?

also for the record i have told the tax credit helpline of every change in my circumstances. but every time i do this the person on the other end of the phone gets something wrong even when i spell it out to them i think very clearly. i rang the helpline 3 times in as many days to tell them they'd made a mistake the first time and was on the phone as soon as i'd opened the letter this time telling me i'd been overpaid because of their error again. it isnt our fault they dont train their staff properly or that they employ people who cant follow instructions