Tax Credits Renewals - 2015

welshone1

Is Tax credits doing Real Time this Year ?

M1964for

Hello - first timer on here. With regards to RTI, I do hope that they sort out the forms with regards to deducting pension payments. My DH pays into a company pension reluctantly set up through Royal London when the new rules came in by his employer. At his previous company they had a proper company pension set up with own trustees etc., on the P60 there were 2 figures, we knew the figure to put down was the one that they had deducted the pension payments. At this company they don't so we then manually have to do this, the pension is managed by Royal London and it is called the "****** pension". Trying to explain to the tax credits office this was like talking to a brick wall. They insist it has already been deducted when it clearly hasn't. Not looking forward to this rigmarole again!

zagfles

blondebubbles wrote: »

Tax credits just get the info fed through from the tax office. The main issue last year was employers reporting the info wrong the the RTI system picking up info wrong.

Yes but what about people making personal pension contributions, gift aid etc?

Will they assume that people who made such contributions last year will make similar contributions this year? Or at least account for the possibility when the figures don't match the RTI info, instead of simply assuming that anyone who returns figures which don't match the RTI information is either mistaken or a fraudster, as they seemed to do last year?

M1964for

Zagfles - that was the kind of thing I was referring too. Was also difficult to get the information from the pension provider, said that the FA whom the company had brought in sent us statements every year. When approached, he said he didn't have them. Surely if they have our NINO's they should be able to trace contributions. We shall see but I am not holding my breath.

zagfles

M1964for wrote: »

Zagfles - that was the kind of thing I was referring too. Was also difficult to get the information from the pension provider, said that the FA whom the company had brought in sent us statements every year. When approached, he said he didn't have them. Surely if they have our NINO's they should be able to trace contributions. We shall see but I am not holding my breath.

They don't seem to be able to. People with workplace pensions where pension contributions are taken from net (after tax) pay have an even worse problem than those making private pension contributions.

There seem to be loads of tax credits staff who are totally clueless about this and simply regurgitate the line that workplace pension contributions aren't deductible. Yes they are, if the pension contribution isn't already deducted from taxable/P60 income.

Maybe the answer is to outlaw this sort of workplace pension and force employers to do things properly and deduct contributions from gross pay before applying tax. It's not that hard.

M1964for

Zagfles

There will be a lot of people out there who are not aware this has happened & on low salaries too. One way IDS makes savings for his Universal Credit system.

zagfles

M1964for wrote: »

Zagfles

There will be a lot of people out there who are not aware this has happened & on low salaries too. One way IDS makes savings for his Universal Credit system.

Actually under UC this should become a lot easier - UC uses net (after tax) income so it won't matter whether pension contributions are deducted from net or gross pay.

gardenia101

Not looking forward to the stress of waiting as it takes TC ages to get large print paperwork to me; last year I didn't get my pack til after the return deadline :rotfl:

Does anyone know if you are sent paperwork that can be renewed online, if you can ignore that & renew over the phone/by post? I'm assuming so, & I expect I'll fail the online check as I don't have a driving licence or passport. A young man at the bank told me I must have either, as it was an offence not to - can't be right, surely?

I've had my new prescription exemption card last week, but as they can't be issued in large print, there isn't usually a problem with them being reissued automatically.

zagfles

blondebubbles wrote: »

No idea, I don't work there.

Sorry I've always assumed you did! Apologies!

Icequeen99

zagfles wrote: »

Yes but what about people making personal pension contributions, gift aid etc?

Will they assume that people who made such contributions last year will make similar contributions this year? Or at least account for the possibility when the figures don't match the RTI info, instead of simply assuming that anyone who returns figures which don't match the RTI information is either mistaken or a fraudster, as they seemed to do last year?

The process should be the same as last year, but it didn't work in practice.

Where a discrepancy is flagged up the person should either have a discussion with someone or receive a letter and both methods should alert the person that there could be legitimate ways for there to be differences (as you identify). In practice, it seemed to end up with some compliance staff just changing awards based on the RTi data without asking the claimant about any potential discrepancies.

IQ