Family Tax Credits Help

conshan

Hi can anyone help me. My husband is self employed and in June I phoned Tax Credit people with estimated earnings for Tax Year 2010-2011 of £ 18,000 and also estimated earnings for this Tax Year 2011-2012 of £ 18,000 saying that when I had received final accounts from Accountant i would infrom them of final figures as i have done evey year.
Well a couple of weeks ago i finally receieved year end accounts and income for Tax Year 2010-2011 was a lot lower so I phoned them and gave them final figure as required and waited for them to send out paperwork as per normal, also i am due money back as over estimated earning so waited for that to be paid.

This moring I received a letter with a provisinal award for this Tax Year using the estimated earning figure for last year not the actual figure given to them !!! I phoned them immeditaly and have been informed that they cannot process new figure I have given them for last years earnings as when I renewed in june the person taking my call put the estimated figure through as final !!! They therfore have to refer my case to head office to see if this can be overturned ...... if not I will have grounds for appeal as i have done everything right, ie infroming them. The odd thing is i received no paperwork from them at the time.

I am now worried, they are telling the whole process can take up to six weeks to sort out and its not even my fault, Having been claiming this for years now and never had a problem.

Was wondering if anyone else has had this happen to them and if do what sort of outcome can I expect, iI cannot afford to loose this money

Thanks

LL30

It happened to me (I seem to have encountered every error possible of late!) I too got the whole garble about how they couldn't change things and it would have to be referred blah blah blah...I almost wrote the underpayment off (tbh I didn't know I was owed anything, but when I realised, it's amazing how important that money becomes!!) Anyway, long story short, I'd kept a log of every phone conversation and wrote them a long letter outlining everything. In response, I got the most nonsensical letter (I honestly think it was for someone else, and my name had been put on it by accident!) so I rang them up and demanded to speak to a manager. I went through the letter I sent stage by stage and then read them their reply. He was so embarrassed he couldn't put me on hold quick enough! It was sorted there and then - but only because a) I had a copy of everything and I always follow things up with a letter, so it's harder for them to squirm out of things and b) they so obviously made a mistake, I think he just wanted to get off the phone! It took around 5 months to resolve everything x

lorelai34

The person on the helpline has given you an incorrect timescale, it used to be 6 weeks but it is now 15 weeks! I would hope it isn't a problem getting it changed though as all they need to do is go back and listen to the call in June where you said it was estimated. If they don't change it then it would be the appeal route. No matter what happens both are lengthy processes.