tax credits help, desperate

lesleydenise

Can anyone help, recently my partner moved in with us. He is currently a student at uni doing a graduate teaching PHD so only earning 2k a year. Obviously I have had to end my single tax credit claim and ask for a new application so we can apply jointly. This is where the problem lies. In the application form they want to know income details for april 2010 to april 2011, but in this year my partner was employed earning 22k a year. This is obviously going to mean we will get much less than were entitled too and I am really frightened as with 2 children losing £400 a month is going to make it impossible for us to live! Has anyone been in this situation before???? I would have thought seen as we only moved in together from october 30th onwards what he earnt in 2010 and 2011 would have been irrelevant to our claim! please help!

brians_daughter

My (limited) knowledge of tax credits leads me to understand that you can ask them to use this years projected income to base the claim on as there is such a huge gap. So they will assess on this years projected figures but i would over rather than under estimate as you may have an overpayment come April as the usual disregard isnt applicable. If you use the entitled to website theres a box on there that says has your income for this year gone up or down by £x amount of £s.

ETA my sister was in simular situ. Her oh earned £30k before they moved in togther but re-trained and his salary dropped by half and HMRC used that years projected income rather than the last complete financial year

Icequeen99

The initial award is based on 10-11 income, but as soon as that comes through you can ring up and give them an estimate for 11-12 which will mean your tax credits will increase.

You must be careful not to give an estimate that could turn out to be too low (e.g. if your partner starts working or something) otherwise you will have an overpayment.

IQ

zagfles

brians_daughter wrote: »

My (limited) knowledge of tax credits leads me to understand that you can ask them to use this years projected income to base the claim on as there is such a huge gap. So they will assess on this years projected figures but i would over rather than under estimate as you may have an overpayment come April as the usual disregard isnt applicable. If you use the entitled to website theres a box on there that says has your income for this year gone up or down by £x amount of £s.

ETA my sister was in simular situ. Her oh earned £30k before they moved in togther but re-trained and his salary dropped by half and thats what HMRC did for them

Yes that's right - you'll have to declare his income last year and you'll get a low award, but you can then phone them and give and estimate for this year and they'll use that instead.

Usual warning with estimates - don't underestimate or there will be an overpayment which you'll have to pay back.

lesleydenise

thanks for the advice guys, I'm going to give them a ring tomorrow and see what they say I just hope the whole process doesnt take too long! Just a relief to know that we will be able to change to our projected income for 2011-2012 once the paperworks come through. I might send a covering letter with all the projected income on to try to speed things up a bit. Feeling better now!