Tax Credit gone down - nothing changed?

staceysteve

Hi,
I'm just wondering if anyone can give me some insight...
We are claiming working tax credits and child tax credits (just had baby beginnig of this month).
Before we made our renewal we were receiving £88 per week but now we are only received £65 per week - nothing changed apart from my partner not earning as much and i've changed from contribution based to income based esa?

Can anyone let me know why they've gone down? I was told by them that child tax credits don't affect working tax credits but it has gone down since declaring we had our baby - we are receiving just under £60 a week ctc.

Thanks for any help

krisskross

staceysteve wrote: »

Hi,
I'm just wondering if anyone can give me some insight...
We are claiming working tax credits and child tax credits (just had baby beginnig of this month).
Before we made our renewal we were receiving £88 per week but now we are only received £65 per week - nothing changed apart from my partner not earning as much and i've changed from contribution based to income based esa?

Can anyone let me know why they've gone down? I was told by them that child tax credits don't affect working tax credits but it has gone down since declaring we had our baby - we are receiving just under £60 a week ctc.

Thanks for any help

Why would this happen?

KateMP

I would contact Taxcredits and ask them to double check your claim. You can phone them for free from your local Jobcentre (saves a fortune when they keep you on hold)
There are three things that I have had problems with
1) they accidentally unticked something on my claim and it left an amount out
2) ESA - I have had varying answers from them about whether or not they take ESA into account with your other income so changing from contribution based to income based could have confused them
3) have you double checked your award notice to make sure the details are actually correct - they have a habit of typing babys DOB wrong, income wrong etc.

Hope you get it sorted soon:o

horse76

Hi, try using this number, as it's a local one so should be cheaper or free if you get free local calls - 028 9053 8192.

Sorry not got much advice, except give them a call as it could be a mistake. They've messed up our payments this month - got a letter saying our payments have stopped as we never submitted our annual renewal. We done it over the phone a month before the cut off date, when I phoned the advisor said he had record of my call and admitted it was probably human error. Now we're not getting any payments for up to 8 weeks, while a new claim is submitted. Totally reeling inside, but nothing we can do about it.

Hope you get it sorted.

Kalia

Is your partner still classed as working at least 16 hours? I am assuming she is on maternity leave rather than working the hours but they still count for the first 39 weeks of maternity leave.

Were your earnings much lower 2 years ago? Is it possible that last year your payments were based on the income from the previous year as that had been lower and that the payments reduced to what you would have got if it weren't for the disregard thing?

It won't be because you added another baby to your claim, if you are getting more than just the £545 family element then adding another child should put your award up by £2555.