tax credit overpayment help please.

overpaymenthelp

Haia,

I stop claim tax credit last April, 2013.
by August i had an overpayment bill for £7012 - waha.

September, october and november i tried to phone the taxcredit office in preston once a week and was always on hold for about an hour and a half - in the end I phoned the tax office Welsh line and explaind that I had been trying to contact the Tax credit overpayment office but could not get anyone - they adviced me to send them a letter and all relevent paper work to preston so I did - recorded delivery on the 13 0f december, 2013. Week later I had another bill for the overpayment - so, I sent them a letter to say that I was disputing the overpayment and included a copy of the letter that I had sent the over payment team - on the 2 January I had a letter back from the debit team - saying even though that I was disputing the overpayment that I still had to pay it back, on the same day, 2/1/14 - I had a phone call from a dept collecting agency asking form the money - I explain to them that I was disputing the overpayment - they put the account on hold - today they where back on the phone say that I had to pay them.
Is this true?
i down loaded the 'Suggested steps to disputing a tax credit overpayment bill' from this web site and it say - that I can stop this until I get some sort of response?
"As I am now disputing the overpayment’s all threats to pursue ‘further action’ must now
cease as per your own code of practice; COP26.”

I have the cop26 - but can not find any wording to this affect - only wording - "we won't stop collecting an overpayment while we do this"!

Also, how long have they to respond to me - I sent the letter on the 13/12/13 - it now almost February

any advices on next step
please help single mother, one child at Uni in London, one in school and one in nursery!!

overpaymenthelp

Thank you.

you don't happen to know how long they the dispute time have to respond to my letter?

thanks

overpaymenthelp

anyone, any advice on my next step? please, thank you

overpaymenthelp

Haia,

I have been trying to phone - cannot get through.
But I actually sent a copy of the dispute letter to the debt department of the HMRC and they even forward it on to the overpayment team - so since October the HMRC have had 3 letters from me - and I have had no reply from them.
I have just phone the welsh line of the HRMC and ask them if my letters are log as a dispute - and the said yes and gave me dates for them.
any suggestions?

Also, not sure what the overpayment is it goes back to 2008, 09,10,12 & 13
I have had a look at my figures - what they said I should have been geeting and look at what I actually got is less - so in simple maths that is an underpayment!

thank you
thank you.