Is it time for a tax credit protest march?

dag_2

I'm all in favour of a protest march.

What Xbigman and sarahlouise are forgetting is this: Although the government used to blow the trumpet about how good and generous tax credits are - in practice, they don't actually pay it.

And when they do pay it, they turn round and issue an overpayment demand as soon as the wind changes direction.

As a result, there are loads of people who are being told they ought to consider themselves lucky, for having got the tax credits they're being asked to repay in the first place - the same tax credits that in theory, they're supposed to be legally entitled to.

If you ask me, the whole system stinks. Let's not stand for it any more.

irs101

Oh come on Dag, clearly people are only being asked to pay back money they are not entitled to. The issue is whether the Govt should have let claimants get into an overpayment position in the first place (either intentionally or because of some balls-up) and how they handle the claimant.

Anyone can see that many people are getting much more money than they ever used to - just look at the figures, or do you think they are outright lying too??

I'm all for berating the Govt when they get it wrong, but make sure you give a balanced view. A lot of people on here rely on their tax credits, and if you come here making out (falsely) that everyone is being overpaid and is going to get hammered by HMRC eventually, it puts them in a terribly difficult position and makes them question whether their own award is right. I'm confident that the vast majority of people will have only a very small overpayment, and probably none at all.

irs

jellyhead

if you know how much you should be getting (using a calculator like entitledto) you can tell when you're being overpaid. year before last they gave me lump sum payments of 3 years worth of money. i knew it was wrong, tried to repay it but they preferred to take it slowly by not giving us any tax credits for 3 or 4 years, that's fine, i'm earning interest on the overpayment.

has anyone had an overpayment with the correct information shown on the award notice? ours was wrong, they had chosen to set our incomes to zero for some reason so it was easy to spot what caused us to be overpaid.

shrek101

I got yet another tax credit asjustment on Saturday. Thats 3 in less than a week all with conflicting overpaymnets. My wife rang them today in tears, and they admitted the adjustments are wrong and in my favour.

The last statement I got gave my income as 0, yet they know what I get I told them on the phone.

How can this sytem be fair, when you tell them the truth about incomes, they then claim they over paid you in the previous year and claw the money back. You dont know whethere to hold on to some of the money (not that we have much anyhow)

My wife is fed up on this and told me today she is never going to work a few extra hours again.

lucym

Well my husband has just spent another 30 minutes on the ‘help line’…now they tell us that the original miss-match is still in existence…which means that it has been going on for about 18 months (we were told that it had been sorted out before). The guy he spoke to thinks that it is a very serious situation, which leaves us wondering whether this other person (real or not – who knows?) has been receiving money all along.

However… we have at last been given a number to call that is outside the usual public domain so we will see what tomorrow brings.

dag_2

Oh come on Dag, clearly people are only being asked to pay back money they are not entitled to.

I don't think that's true - and I'm very sure it's not true in my case.

If they only want back money that people weren't entitled to in the first place, then they should be able to explain how they've calculated the overpayment. But they don't do this.

I went to the citizens advice bureau - they told me I have a right to ask for an official explanation of overpayment calculation. Which I did. And I haven't heard from the tax credit office since. Funny that, n'est-ce pas? Odder still, they're still paying me tax credits - though I'm very sure they'll consider it an overpayment this time round. But I'm not disputing potential future overpayments - I'm disputing current ones.

I can't pretend I'm not pleased that they've backed off my case - but I'd much rather the whole thing was done and dusted.

That said ...

The issue is whether the Govt should have let claimants get into an overpayment position in the first place (either intentionally or because of some balls-up) and how they handle the claimant.

I agree these things are important - but I think you need to consider the possibility that some of the overpayment demands are unjustifiable.

It seems that disputing a tax credit overpayment is slowly beginning to form a social stigma. People don't believe that tax credit recipients who dispute their overpayments might actually be right - instead, they patronise them, and consider them to be ignoramuses who can't manage their finances. Considering the similarities to the Speenhamland system, and the history of how it indirectly led on to the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, this worries me a lot.

A lot of people on here rely on their tax credits, and if you come here making out (falsely) that everyone is being overpaid and is going to get hammered by HMRC eventually, it puts them in a terribly difficult position and makes them question whether their own award is right.

Yes - but that's the way it happens. It's right to question whether your own award is right; indeed, you only have 30 days in which to do this.

In my naivety, I originally thought that because tax-credits are assessed on annual income, you could settle overpayments on a yearly basis, just like you do with income tax. But no. Turns out you have to appeal against incorrect awards within 30 days - even though you don't know whether an award is correct or not until after the end of the tax year.

If rules like this are not the government's way of thumbing their noses up at us, then I don't know what is.

Also - since they seem to send out multiple awards for no readily apparent reason - the only way to stay on top of your tax credits is to be prepared to make an appeal at least once every fourteen days, to any new award notices you may happen to have received during those fourteen days.

That's just the way it is. If you don't like that, then you shouldn't be claiming tax credits in the first place.

Snag is - once you've started receiving tax credits, it's damn difficult to stop. Why? Because they get much heavier about your overpayments - and might expect you to refund all your alleged "overpayments" in one go.

And besides - when you consider the effect of tax credits on housing benefit, you only stand to be fractionally better off at best anyway - but the fact that overpayments aren't reversed back into your housing benefit mean you run the risk of being substantially worse off by claiming tax credits. My advice is, don't start getting tax credits in the first place.

lucym

It isn’t just about people who have been overpaid…I wonder how many others have been affected by miss-matches or through their child/ren being linked to more than one claim (don’t ask me how this is possible – it just is). These people are not included in the recently released figures.

dag wrote:

It seems that disputing a tax credit overpayment is slowly beginning to form a social stigma. People don't believe that tax credit recipients who dispute their overpayments might actually be right - instead, they patronise them, and consider them to be ignoramuses who can't manage their finances.

I used to think that the people who were having problems must have made a mistake when they were filling in the forms…now I know how wrong I was.

lucym

irs101 wrote:

I'm all for berating the Govt when they get it wrong, but make sure you give a balanced view. A lot of people on here rely on their tax credits, and if you come here making out (falsely) that everyone is being overpaid and is going to get hammered by HMRC eventually, it puts them in a terribly difficult position and makes them question whether their own award is right. I'm confident that the vast majority of people will have only a very small overpayment, and probably none at all.

irs

Well the figures show that a third of claimants have been ‘overpaid’…I now think that we all need to find out exactly how much we should be getting (the sums are not difficult to do on paper) and to be proactive – save obvious overpayments, chase them up when we are underpaid and fight incorrect ‘overpayments’.


In my opinion the Inland Revenue

A) Should know what everyone (okay not self-employed but the rest of us) earns – from week to week
Should have access about which children belong to which family via the child benefit agency


The questions I ask are

A) Why don’t they know what they should be paying us – from week to week?
How can another persons child be included in our claim whilst our own are not?
C) How on earth can two very different claims be paid under one national insurance number (miss-match)?

Murtle

N9eav wrote:

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...

I'm sure she can get herself a part time job to pay for her own driving lessons like so many other 17 years olds do???

jellyhead

sorry if i'm being thick but why would the amount drop when she's 17? doesn't it stay the same if she stays in education (correct me if i'm wrong), and the child benefit stays the same too? she'll also get the EMA i presume?