child tax credit strikes again!

fisherking

I am a single father, and my (then) 15 year old daughter was living with me.

She went to live with her mother fora month ,so I immediately I informed thechild tax credit.

About 2 weeks later I received a letter telling me they weregoing to carry on paying me, and would over pay me by just over £300. Which I would then have to pay back.

I phoned them as soon as I received the letter and spoke to anadvisor, he informed me that the reason they would carry on paying me was incase it caused hardship for them to stop the payments at this time, I informedhim it would only cause me hardship if he overpaid me and I had to pay it allback, I asked him very firmly, to stop the payments!. He said he would put anote for his manager to stop the payments, it turns out they didn’t stop thepayments, I now have to pay back over £300.

I did fill in a form to have it wiped, explained it all. Butit was overruled, I have to pay it.

As a result, when my daughter came back to live with me I didnot claim child tax credit for at least 4 or 5 months, since I knew they always mess up. But I didend up claiming it back about 4 months ago. My daughter is now 16, she isnow not going back to school so I have not filled in a new claim.

I knew the ctc would stop, but I have now received a lettertelling me they have over paid me by £629. This would b I believe the entireamount they have just paid me, my wages have not changed, my daughter wasliving with me the entire time, theyhave given no reason for the overpayment.

Before anyone asks the question, No I did not know they werestill paying me. I have online banking, and I only look at the balance. I havea lot of incoming and outgoing on my account, and don’t check it all unlesshave reason to. It’s got very complicatedto use my online banking, I’m not good with online banking it confuses me!.

Caz3121

fisherking wrote: »

I am a single father, and my (then) 15 year old daughter was living with me.

She went to live with her mother fora month ,so I immediately I informed thechild tax credit.

About 2 weeks later I received a letter telling me they weregoing to carry on paying me, and would over pay me by just over £300. Which I would then have to pay back.

I phoned them as soon as I received the letter and spoke to anadvisor, he informed me that the reason they would carry on paying me was incase it caused hardship for them to stop the payments at this time, I informedhim it would only cause me hardship if he overpaid me and I had to pay it allback, I asked him very firmly, to stop the payments!. He said he would put anote for his manager to stop the payments, it turns out they didn’t stop thepayments, I now have to pay back over £300.

I did fill in a form to have it wiped, explained it all. Butit was overruled, I have to pay it.

As a result, when my daughter came back to live with me I didnot claim child tax credit for at least 4 or 5 months, since I knew they always mess up. But I didend up claiming it back about 4 months ago. My daughter is now 16, she isnow not going back to school so I have not filled in a new claim.

I knew the ctc would stop, but I have now received a lettertelling me they have over paid me by £629. This would b I believe the entireamount they have just paid me, my wages have not changed, my daughter wasliving with me the entire time, theyhave given no reason for the overpayment.

Before anyone asks the question, No I did not know they werestill paying me. I have online banking, and I only look at the balance. I havea lot of incoming and outgoing on my account, and don’t check it all unlesshave reason to. It’s got very complicatedto use my online banking, I’m not good with online banking it confuses me!.

If you doubted whether they would stop the payments, you should have checked your bank account and you could then have put the money aside for when they asked for it back

Whether you intend to claim tax credits going forwards you still need to complete the form they send you by 31st July to enable them to finalise the previous years claim (as they use the year before's income for an initial calculation there could be an underpayment or overpayment once they get the actuals) Failure to return the form means the entire years payments are due back. - the information should have been on the form they sent you

fisherking

I did look at the form they sent, it seemed to b telling me that my money would stop if i failed to fill the form in and send it back. since i was no longer going to claim it as my daughter was now 16 and no longer going be in education i did not fill it in. my income has not changed, so i saw no point in filling it in. i only remember it explaining my money would then stop. or if there were any overpayments i would hvae to pay it back. there were no overpayments, I thought the form was just to continue claiming. It seems that everything is set in thier favour, i have never had them pay the correct amount, no matter how much information i gave them.
I did not expect them to coniinue paying me the first overpayment after i had the phone call with them. if u can't get them to stop paying you for money that your not entitled to, even when you demand them to stop, then there is something really wrong with the system. knowing how bad they ae, i did wonder if there was a way to block the payments into my bank account, but there wasn't so I thought a strongly worded phone call was the next best thing. I was wrong!.
They haven't even told me why there was an overpayment, or given me a number to ring to find out. when i ring the number at the top of the page, I'm given options, the one relating to overpayments tells u to go to thier online webpage which covrers reasons for overpayments. not very helpful!
I will jusst put this down to me being stupid enough to cliam ctc again!

Icequeen99

fisherking wrote: »

I did look at the form they sent, it seemed to b telling me that my money would stop if i failed to fill the form in and send it back. since i was no longer going to claim it as my daughter was now 16 and no longer going be in education i did not fill it in. my income has not changed, so i saw no point in filling it in. i only remember it explaining my money would then stop. or if there were any overpayments i would hvae to pay it back. there were no overpayments, I thought the form was just to continue claiming. It seems that everything is set in thier favour, i have never had them pay the correct amount, no matter how much information i gave them.
I did not expect them to coniinue paying me the first overpayment after i had the phone call with them. if u can't get them to stop paying you for money that your not entitled to, even when you demand them to stop, then there is something really wrong with the system. knowing how bad they ae, i did wonder if there was a way to block the payments into my bank account, but there wasn't so I thought a strongly worded phone call was the next best thing. I was wrong!.
They haven't even told me why there was an overpayment, or given me a number to ring to find out. when i ring the number at the top of the page, I'm given options, the one relating to overpayments tells u to go to thier online webpage which covrers reasons for overpayments. not very helpful!
I will jusst put this down to me being stupid enough to cliam ctc again!

It isn't too late to sort out the £629 overpayment. Ring them now and tell them you want to complete your renewal as you missed the deadline. They will finalise your 2012/13 claim and confirm your 13/14 claim so the 629 overpayment will disappear. Then you will need to tell them on 31st August that she is no longer continuing in education and they can stop the CTC properly.

IQ

FBaby

All of this doesn't make sense. When you daughter moved, was it on the basis that she was going to move for good? Did her mother start claiming child benefit? Children are entitled to go away for a month, especially in the summer without having to cancel a claim. I can only assume it was on the basis that it would be permanent or tax credits would not have told you that money would be deducted otherwise.

After that, all errors were yours it would seem. If you had issues with them telling you that they couldn't stop the payment, then you SHOULD have checked your bank account. You claiming you can't do that because of using on-line banking is not a sound excuse at all. From the time you've reached the page to check your balance it is usually only one more click to see the details of transactions. The tax credit guys said he would put a note to his manager about it, not that he was confirming it was definitely going to happen.

The fact that you had to pay back £300 is an issue with the way you manage your money.

As for the rest of it, I do have more sympathy as this would seem to relate to how confusing the system is, with you probably not renewing your claim on time or something like that. Again, in practice it is your responsibility to follow the rules to avoid over payments, but those rules are so complex, it often feels that only those working with the system understand them, hence many posters coming here to post about over payments.

fisherking

I did try to keep it simple, perhaps too simple.
My daughter tends to go back to live with her mother after an argument with me. she will never stay ther for good( a long story)>
When she came back with me (which was very soon after leaving) I couldn't get out of her whether she was staying with me or not, so it dragged on for a long time. this made it very hard to claim tax credit!.
As far as checking the bank goes< i was going through a very bad divorce at the same time. my ex wife was hitting me with loads of paperwork and trying to get every penny out of me. I was working full time, looking after my daughters, one had a baby. while filling huge amounts of forms for solicitors, getting house estimates, putting in for legal costs to try and get my solicitors bills down. and there was much more going on.
The fact that the money was paid into my bank in the first place meant it was included into my finances, this pushed my income to just above the entitled amount for legal costs. when I had to get a years worth of bak statments for my ex wifes solicitors it was also shown on the statments, this meant she wanted more money from me in the settlment. So, no. it wasn't a simple case of saving the money and paying it back to them!. I didnt't check my bank account, because i was realy really busy filling so much paper work for my divorce, and working, and looking after my 2 daughters , and helping with my grandson that I had no time work out how to log onto the online banking and check. but it ended up costing me well over the money they paid me. and I did explain this to my solicitor, and hers, but hey have the same kind of rules as ctc. it don't really matter. it's in your account!. Perhaps this explains it a bit better, it's never as simple as that!.

FBaby

I can understand how life can get so busy, you can't find the time and energy to do the things we should do. I've been there and your situation could have been mine, but that doesn't mean that you don't have to pay back money you were not entitled to. For all I know I might one day get a similar letter, after all, I had 2 or 3 refunds when I was claiming, I always checked the information I provided was correct, but never looked further. If it happens, I'll moan and curse the maladministration of the system, but will accept that the money is still owed.