Is it time for a tax credit protest march?

lucym

I am all for tax credits - if only they were managed properly.

Last year we suffered an ILR “miss-match” which left us penniless just before Christmas (during this time the other half of the miss-match was paid money under my husbands NI number although we have never found out how much and are still waiting for that issue to be resolved – can’t see how it will ever be). Intervention from our MP eventually got us our money (paid by giro) but because the people he deals with are outside of the normal tax credit system when THEY eventually caught up they decided that they owed us for the whole year, leaving us with a £6000 overpayment that is now sitting in a high interest account.

The ILR claim that they have not received our complaint about the miss-match but then they have also admitted that they have rooms full of unopened correspondence.

Last week the tax credit computer system decided to exclude our children from our claim – the result being no money last week and this week. It seems that this is a known glitch (the people we spoke to on the phone spotted it straight away but can’t explain why it happens). Now that we are into our second week without our regular payments we have had to delve into the saved overpayment in order to cover our direct debits.

Last year we had numerous different award notices and what with the £2500 allowance and the fact that our daughter went from middle rate disability to higher rate partway through a year we are now thoroughly confused about how much we should have been getting anyway. We no longer have any faith in the ILR getting the sums right at all. Every time we call the “help line” we are told something different.

Reading about all the problems people are having with tax credit leaves us totally despairing that it will ever be resolved unless the government is forced to listen. Our situation has been bad enough; it must be so much worse for those on a lower wage or for single parents.

Both myself and my partner have been reduced to tears over this situation – how can that be right?

Xbigman

Lets put this in perspective.

Before tax credits working families got - well basicly nothing. This means two things.

We now get extra money in not insignificant amounts. Would any of us like to go back to the old system and get nothing? I thought not.

The second thing this means is that a totally untested system with millions of eligable people appeared from nowhere. I personally think the IR have done a brilliant job of bringing this in. Its not that complicated but as its estimated from year old data there will always be problems. If you compare the tax credits system to the CSA (still a shambles after more than a decade) then the IR look even better. As long as the percentage of errors continues to drop the IR have my full support.
Regards



X

lucym

I agree with you that the present tax credit rates are far better than the old tax credit and family credit however the system is a complete shambles. Like many others we count the tax credit as part of our income and to lose that money means that we can no longer afford to feed our family.

We have bills and a mortgage to pay – when we suffered the miss-match last year we were pushed further into debt because of bank charges and we ended up having to cancel our direct debits. We do know that the other half of the miss-match received some money under my husbands NI number but have no idea how much - it is very possible that at some point the IR will ask us to pay that back.

The IR has sent us details about this other person including his phone number, address, bank account and the names of his children. Surely that is a contravention of the data protection act. We don’t know if he was sent our details or if he knows that we have his.

The fact that the IR uses year old data has no bearing on our problems. We are now into the second week with no tax credit payments (our weekly food money!) because the system suddenly decided not to include our children in our claim.

So to put it in perspective – thousands of families have suffered severe hardship over the inadequacies of the present tax credit system. Some people have lost their jobs or homes. The tax credit was designed to enable people to work in low paid jobs so obviously to suddenly have it removed is going to have dire consequences.

It is no good saying that millions of eligible people have appeared from nowhere if they come to rely on their tax credit payments only to find them yanked away without any warning and no way of paying the bills.

chugalug

Xbigman, while I agree with some of your post, its not all true. Before tax credits we had working families tax credit plus an amount through the tax code. This meant that for at least 6 months you could be absolutely guaranteed of your income, no overpayments were generated and payments didnt stop if your income went up, it just affected the next 6 months payments. Before that it was Family Credit before that Family income supplement. All of these to a certain degree meant you at least knew what your income was going to be. Its not just working parents that are affected by the tax credit shambles either. Those on benefits now have their childrens payments throught the IR. If there is a c**k up, these people are left with virtually nothing to keep their children on. I personally know of one case where a single parent had to send his children away to live with relatives because the IR and benefit people could not co-operate with each other so he was left with crisis loans for him and his family. Not good when you're already suffering depression. If you take into account the fact that its mostly low income family's that qualify together with the Govts drive to get everyone into work (including single parents and the sick) then this maladministration is a disaster. We don't all have reserves with which to cover losses in basic income. Employers are laughing because the Govt subsidises low wages and the Govt is laughing because they reduce the overall benefit figures. Lots of parents aren't laughing though.

Xbigman

chugalug wrote:

Employers are laughing because the Govt subsidises low wages and the Govt is laughing because they reduce the overall benefit figures.

Whatever anyones view of the tax credit system this is the real issue. Our society is totally screwed up. My ex would never take a job whilst our daughter lived with her because she could never replace the benefits. Now our daughter lives with me she is still in the same position because her rent is so high. She has never and will never have a job.

Do I have an answer? no, and no one else does either.
Regards



X

sarahlouise210

I believe the main problem is that the tax credit system is overly generous. The amounts of tax credits available in certain circumstances are massive - for example a friend of mine who receives DLA and has a disabled child would receive more in tax credits than her husband actually earns if they were they to separate...........how can this be right??? The tax credits have become such a huge chunk of peoples income they have come to rely on them. As has been said before , before tax credits the average man in the street did not get anything.. ok there was a tax allowance but that only equated to £10 per week. The majority of people are on more than the basic family element and if anyone can only feed their children if they receive this additional £10 then something is wrong. I would sacrifice paying any other expense so as I could feed my children. I see time and time again tax credit claimants claiming they have no nappies, no food etc for their children but they are smoking, their pushchairs have Next bags hanging from them etc etc. I am not saying that there are not deserving cases where there is hardship-in these cases (and cases not so deserving) there are procedures to make emergency payments. No-one can justify in this day and age not feeding their children - it amazes me that it seems to be everyone elses problem to care for children! If you cannot even feed a child without tax credit help then what hope do they have?It is not as if the only benefit received is tax credits. I await the barrage of critisism! however, until you have seen a vast number of tax credit claimants and their unreasonable expectations of the tax credit system paying for their lifestyle you cannot begin to understand the impact that introducing this tax credit sysetm has had on our society-especially the younger generation who do not know what it was like before.

jellyhead

oooh sarah you're a brave girl lol!

i can whinge about tax credits as much as the next person (i'd prefer to get my tenner a week in hubby's wage packet, the old system never went wrong) but i see your point that we should be able to feed our children without tax credits. i have been a single mum on income support and while i never had the 'next carrier bags and fag in mouth' lifestyle my child was never hungry. minimum wage is nothing special but it should be enough to feed your children, it's certainly more than i got on income support. the problem comes when tax credits are part of the benefit, i believe income support doesn't work the same way anymore, that part of it is tax credits so if the tax credits are wrong you don't actually get enough to live on. also there are lots of people using childcare while they work - if the tax credits are wrong they still have to pay their childcare bill.

yes, people in my situation should stop moaning, i'm married and if we were ever in a position of not being able to afford food then one of us could get a job in the evenings, or overnight stacking shelves etc - the tax credits are not the major part of our income. but i think there are a lot of people in a vulnerable situation since the income support changed, etc. so there are people who literally have no money. i knew a couple in our street whose bank charges escalated while they waited for their claim to be sorted out, and yes i did wonder why when there were two adults one of them couldn't get extra work but if it was a single parent in the same situation then the bank charges for unpaid direct debits, going overdrawn to buy food etc. would cause a real problem.

in the old days around 5 years ago when i was on income support i was guaranteed to get my £68 a week and that was enough for food and bills but if part of that had been made up of tax credits and the tax credits weren't arriving for some reason then i'd have been stuffed. my sis was in the situation once where she worked 16 hours a week. her tax credits went wrong and she was left with her wages (70-ish a week) to pay for everything including her rent and her childcare bill for while she was at work. i remember her waiting for her child benefit (paid monthly) so she could refund all the friends and relatives who'd been subbing her - but what if she hadn't had anyone to lend the odd fiver here and there?

i agree that the CSA is a shambles, but parents usually have enough to live on without it. if not on benefits it can be assumed that you earn more than the income support threshold, on benefits you have the option of asking the CSA to collect the money on your behalf (they keep it anyhow so they might as well collect it) so that you get the income support amount every week regardless of whether or not the absent father is making regular payments.

if the tax credits are wrong then income support is not enough to live on, not now that part of it is made up of tax credits. if you're working a 16 hour week then min wage isn't enough to live in either.

lucym

I am sure that the people described do exist although I can’t understand why parents would spend the last of their money in Next rather than on food for the family.

We lost our tax credit the day after our wages had been paid and as our mortgage and other bills are all set up to be taken out of our wages that left us with very little money. As I said before we did then cancel all our direct debits (bar the mortgage) so that we wouldn’t have the same situation the following month.

The issue I raised is not about what people choose to spend their money on but about them getting what they are entitled to. It is unreasonable to encourage people into low paid jobs and then remove the safety net.

sarahlouise210

Lucym...I too cannot understand why people would choose to spend the last of their money elsewhere than feed their family but it does happen and not in isolated cases. I am not saying that every case is the same..far from it. There are totally deserving cases and as I said before emergency payments can be made in person if there is hardship. I take your point Lucym that the issue is not what people choose to spend their tax credits on but about them getting what they are entitled to. However, the point I am making is that the amounts that people are entitled to are unrealistically high. I enjoy receiving my tax credits as much(if not more!) than the next man but even I would have to say if I am honest that the amounts of tax credits I get are generous to the extreme! Before tax credits came in we had £10 ish per week...after .. several thousand per year. It is very easy to adjust your lifestyle to these payments to such an extent that when there is a glitch it causes major problems. If the amounts of tax credits were not so high, missed payments would cause less problems. How the government is paying these tax credits I do not know-they encourage us to work 16 hours but give us more money in tax credits than we could ever pay in tax or would have received in stand alone benefits. I think you should write to the other half of the mis-match and find out if he has your details. If he has complain like hell to HMRC ! They have no right to pass on your information. If the OH does not have your details let him know you have his so he can complain. Does not solve your problem but it is the right thing to do. The I.R. are not allowed to disclose personal information to anyone without written authority. To answer your original post concerning the protest march.. you would of course be joined by thousands ! There have been so many problems.. the worst being overpayments. What never ceases to amaze me regarding enormous overpayments is the surprise that they are incorrect - by enormous I mean overpayments of say £18000. If I received £18000 in tax credits I think alarm bells would ring! But again, because tax credits are so generous people can be excused for feeling they were getting what they were "entitled" to.

lucym

Sarahlouise…I agree with you that if the tax credit available had not been so high in the first place then we would not have suffered so much when we lost it. However we trusted that the government had budgeted properly for it and actually I still think that in the long run the generous rates will help so many people back into the job market that in the end it will benefit the country overall.

We have often though about contacting the other half of our miss-match but we were advised not to do so by the police (when the miss-match first occurred we were worried that it was a case of identity theft and filed a police report – this was before we had read about how common miss-matches were). Around that time we were assured that the IR fraud team would investigate but we have never heard anything from them despite the fact that we have enquired about it on a regular basis. I am now thinking that we should contact him anyway…as you say it is the right thing to do.

As to overpayments – we have always made an effort to try to work what we are entitled to (even to the point of adding the various elements up ourselves and trying to factor in yearly changes) however I know many families who have repeatedly queried their payments, been told that everything is correct and then have been hit with a large repayments.

N9eav

I think the whole system is messy. My salary rises seach eyar by about 6%, some from the pay rise some from sevice increments. There is also a little overtime. So when you fill in the forms for the tax credit people, they suddently tell you they have massively overpaid you and want it back. I don't like having to guess how much I will earn this year... and then find if I have earned more than my estimate.... the benefit changes and they want money back. Why not just lower my tax code then I know how much I will get and don't have to fill in stupid forms.
If that is'nt bad enough when my daughter reaches 17, my amount goes from £250 to £40. great! Just when she wants to learn to drive and go to Uni...