£8723 tax credits finally written off!!

AnxiousMum

Well, given all the discrepancies in the OP's post here, and other places on the forum - I wonder if the overpayment was ever there.....how do you rack up overpayments on tax credits when one has an income of £30,000, the other has sickness pay coming in, and there are no dependent children????

Why oh why do posters come on with stories of the same situation that differ from the last time they told it? Waste of people's time.

spaceman5

homealone wrote: »

my case started in 2003 and after literally dozens of letters, phone calls and appeals i finally got my case looked into and written off. i had been explaining for years that i was very ill throughout that and following year and had no knowledge of any money going in or out of my accounts. most of the days i was so high on drugs i barely knew my own name let alone my state of affairs, but no one listened. i involved citizens advice and they sent letters and the same with a peoples rightcharity and then contacted my MP but still kept getting bog standard replies saying nothing they could do unless i had new information that they previously had no account of. until one day when i accidentally ran across a new piece of legislation saying

"They may not ask you to pay back an overpayment if you contacted them to tell them about personal circumstances that meant you could not check your award notice or bank payments. For example you or a family member was seriously ill in hospital."

well!! that was exactly what i had been telling them for years. i wrote again but nothing...silence i then saw a program on tv where various people from both the tax department and others stated if anyone felt their case had not been looked into properly you could write to them and they would look into it. well i did this immediately and after only 4 days i received a letter from the tax credit department saying that although they sympathised with my predictament at the end of the day my husband could of either opened my post and dealt with it himself or he could have brought the letters into me in hospital and i could have then contacted them myself. i was livid, for one thing these were adressed to me so why were they even suggesting that my husband should open, read and then take it upon himself to contact them about this. BUT then under this letter was another from the director of taxes saying that on this occasion he could see how i would not have been able to conduct my own affairs and the whole amount would be written off. i cant even begin to tell how how relieved i was! it still meant i had other overpayments for other years, but thats a whole other story. i just wanted to let anyone in similar situation not to give up, if you feel you were not to blame for this fight and i will help anyone in any way i can

As soon as i read this bit, it set the alarm bells ringing, firstly, if it was a joint claim it would be addressed to them both, and secondly he is her husband, why would she be livid with him for opening up her mail, if she was in hospital for nearly a year and not coherant surely she would have expected him to open her mail for her to make sure there was no nasties like this happen, something is not right for sure