i dont understand it is it right???

stassy23

my friend was on income support but came off it in july and moved her partner in, she put a claim in for tax credits on the 15th july 2010 she has 2 children above the age of one.

She checked her bank yest and shes received £1100 and her partner has received £900 so she rang tax credits questioning it
apparently shes entitled to it but its only been 3 nearly 4 weeks since she put a claim in surely they dont back date that much???

shes getting £98 a week now and her partner is getting £54 working tax.

i told her to becareful just in case it was wrong.

he earnt £9000 last year

we've never had that much back dated

thanks all

SuziQ

I don't know about this case, but when I renewed this year they did something a bit weird: they gave me a lump sum of several hundred pounds on top of the months tax credits, but then lowered the monthly payment by about £50 a month for the rest of the year. I thought that was really odd,as I would have prefered to have had a higher monthly amount. I am budgeting it into my monthly amount, but I am guessing that many others would get tempted to spend the lump sum and suffer the rest of the year!

Maybe also there was an underpayment for last year that they have rectified for her?

stassy23

shes been on income support for 7 years!!! shes just come off it onto tax credit i dunno its very strange

Breast_Cancer_Survivor

Did her oh cancel his WTC claim as I was under the impression that they would have to make a joint claim now they are living together.

miss_spooky

Hi,

I'm only replying based on what I received. I am on IS and partner is not working at mo. We get on average £644 every 4 weeks (but we do get disabiblty element so you need to knock approx £200 from that). If she has only just put in a claim, then what they have received could be right. She should just give them a quick call to make sure.

What is strange is that normally they only put it into one bank account.

Robbie64

Was she getting money included in with her Income Support for her children rather than getting Child Tax Credit? If she was then her Child Tax Credit payments may have been backdated for up to 13 weeks ,which will add up to a large amount if she was previously getting no CTC.

cte1111

I wouldn't spend it until she's seen and checked the paper work. They tend to say it is correct on the phone as they don't always have a clue. If she has only just moved in with her partner in July, I can't see how they can be owed that much but you never know. If I were her I would stick it in a savings account and see what they've done on paper.

NB if they have received an over payment because of an error by the tax credits people, then she does not have to repay it. We received an over-payment because they had mistakenly reduced my husband's income to 0 but kept his working hours at 21. As we had obviously never given them this information, after about 3 months of complaints and consideration they had to conclude that it was their error and therefore we were entitled to keep the overpayment.

stassy23

her partner never claimmed wtc, shes always had income support never ctc. but what gets me im not be horrible she has been caught benefit fraud coz her partner has been living there all the time, so i think its a bit unfair for her to get all that and people who do things right dont get nothing!!! they havent sorted her ben fraud out yet shes still waiting to hear whats going to happen.

Robbie64

If she's never had CTC before then that is probably why she has been given such a large amount, she has probably been awarded child tax credits backdated for several weeks. She needs to check with the tax credits people that she can keep that money. When my sister changed from getting Income Support for her children to getting child tax credits I don't think she got any backdated amount of child tax credits. The reason is that the maximum amount of child tax credits per week is paid at much the same rate as child allowances and the Family Premium in Income Support.

Maximum CTC for two children is £98.94
Income Support plus Family Premium (less Child Benefit) for two children is £132.54 less £33.70 = £98.84

I'm sure she's only supposed to get one set of payments and not both.

miss_spooky

Hi,

Robbie64, I'm not sure that's right. Going by my own experiences I currently claim IS+FP, am in reciept of Carer's Allowance (Maybe this makes a difference) and also receive the max CTC benefit. Both children 6 & 3yrs. My partner is out of work & not claiming hence the IS.

I've just phoned them as he starts work tom (Wehey:T)! And they've just adjusted everything accordingly...

Mollycat13

It appears to me that she was getting money for the children via income support and not via child tax credit.

In making a claim, it looks like child tax credit has been backdated...as she was claiming income support (with child premiums), there will be an overpayment of either income support or child tax credit.

She can't be paid twice for the children for the same period.

I would advise not spending any of the lump sum because it will either belong to DWP or HMRC.

Or at least this is my understanding of the situation.