cancelling tax credits

furby-2003

hi all. I'm cancelling my tax credits as of the 1st april. I've sent them the official notice in writing and going to call again on the day, They already know i'm doing this.

When will they finalise the claim? is it when we get our p60's?

If so when do you usually get them.

System

You need to provide your income details from your 2006-2007 P60's so that they can finalise 2006-2007 and ensure that you have not been either under or overpaid.

Regarding 2007-2008 and you not wanting to claim for that year you need to be careful that you don't end up with an overpayment. This is because provisional payments are automatically issued from 6 April and they might not have actioned your letter in time. If you do receive payments and spend them then they will say it was not "reasonable" for you to assume the payments were yours to spend when you knew you had written asking them to stop the claim. They will expect you to set any payments aside until they ask for them back. I would suggest a high interest account so that you can make some money out of them.

creamtea_2

:j Thanks - will follow suit - we all should!!!!!

cannot wait to be free of them.


http://www.taxcreditoverpayment.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/2.html

site is brilliant

furby-2003

ive been saving main already just in case. We did say we would earn £16k between us which changed throughout the year from £14 so they said we would have an overpayment of about £1000 including last years. but we only picked up £14800 between us so I was aiming to pay back £1000 but it's not going to be that much now so i'm prepared (long story as i've already paid back £6899!!!) which i'm going to still pursue after all this has gone

dag_2

http://www.taxcreditoverpayment.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/2.html

Damn - I wish I had known about this web site earlier!

I was threatened with court action. I hadn't actually received the court summons, however, I eventually paid up £700-odd by debit card over the phone to them.

Obviously I queried it first - but they said the reason I had been overpaid was because I had filled in the web form to claim tax credits twice, and they awarded me twice over, and apparently paid me double what they should have paid me for about a year before they noticed.

I didn't notice it either, because the payments for the two awards were not made at the same time. One of them was paid weekly during the period it related to, but the other was paid in a lump sum later on, together with a backdated award notice explaining that I should have received more than I already had. However, I had received so many apparently contradictory award notices by this time that I simply didn't think anything of it, and I certainly couldn't make any sense of them.

However, this "double payment" story was a very long time coming. I had queried the overpayment a number of times before they threatened court action, but they had always said the overpayment was because I hadn't sent in an annual declaration. It's only recently that they changed their story to a "we've paid you twice over" line.

I remember thinking that their original story about me not sending in an annual declaration is clearly not true. If I hadn't made an annual declaration for that year, then I don't see how they would have been able to get self-employed income figures for that year which I had calculated myself. I had previously been told that it's possible to make an annual declaration verbally over the telephone - is this correct?

Anyway, this left me thinking I want to drop out of the tax credit system. I felt that I can't afford to run the risk that they will deny receipt of every annual declaration that I might ever send, and use this as an excuse to recover the entire award that has already been deducted out of my housing benefit. I wondered if it was better not to claim tax credits in the first place - except that I was later told that you're not supposed to be able to cancel tax credits, the award just carries on until you no longer qualify.

What happens if you leave the country? Does the tax credit system chase you and plague you all the way around the world? I sincerely hope not! There's got to be a way of opting out of the system!

When someone finally came up with the "we've paid you twice over" theory, and supported it by explaining how certain payments and award notices on certain dates fitted in, then I must admit it sounded plausible. By that time, however, I was too tired with the whole thing to check it out properly.

Anyway - thanks for the link.