High income child benefit - charges for benefit I never received??

[Deleted User]

Pasanda wrote: »

Thanks! It says they don't open until 8.30 though .... (but the child benefit office open at 8)

Don’t believe everything you read! Telephone just before 8.

Dazed_and_confused

@Dazed and Confused: What do you mean with "Child benefit charge has nothing to do with child benefit you received"? Not sure I understand. What would the charge be for if not for allegedly receiving benefit? (which I haven't).

It is the higher earner in the household who has to pay child benefit back so you might not have been receiving it but your spouse could have been and you, if the higher earner, would have been responsible for paying the tax charge.

Pasanda

Dazed_and_confused wrote: »

@Dazed and Confused: What do you mean with "Child benefit charge has nothing to do with child benefit you received"? Not sure I understand. What would the charge be for if not for allegedly receiving benefit? (which I haven't).

It is the higher earner in the household who has to pay child benefit back so you might not have been receiving it but your spouse could have been and you, if the higher earner, would have been responsible for paying the tax charge.

Ah ! Thanks for clarifying - I understand what you meant now.

Pasanda

[Deleted User] wrote:

Don’t believe everything you read! Telephone just before 8.

:j Thanks for the tip !

Pasanda

Update:
Spoken both to the department that sent the letter and to the child benefit office today.
As suggested in this thread, I need to get a letter from the child benefit office stating my benefit has stopped and that last payment was in Januaru 2013 (which the benefit office confirmed). I have exactly 1 month to do this but the child benefit office says the letter will take 4 weeks. Although the tax department said they put a note on my file re. next steps etc I dont trust confirmations over phone so have this morning sent a letter (recorded) to explain why I disagree and for them to postpobe the deadline to accommodate the receipt of the letter feom child benefit office.

So thanks to advice from helpful moneysavers I felt more confident during the call with the two departements.

anselld

Well done for sorting that out.

HMRC on the other hand - pathetic shambles!

xylophone

HMRC on the other hand - pathetic shambles!

I have to say that it seems to me that HMRC's requirement for a letter to be obtained from another section of the same organisation seems utterly ridiculous and to add insult to injury when they have erroneously claimed a large sum of money from a taxpayer.

xylophone

It occurs to me that the OP might like to refer the matter to his MP.

anselld

xylophone wrote: »

I have to say that it seems to me that HMRC's requirement for a letter to be obtained from another section of the same organisation seems utterly ridiculous and to add insult to injury when they have erroneously claimed a large sum of money from a taxpayer.

And it seems they are still threatening fines if they take more than four weeks to write back to themselves via the taxpayer!

xylophone

I once worked for a very large organisation in a department which was itself sub divided into sections dealing with various aspects of a certain law.

It was very common for a number of sections to need to comment/take action on matters arising from the operation of that law.

It was up to me to make sure that I dealt with anything relating to my own area of knowledge before sending the file to other sections to comment as required before it returned to me to write the necessary letter.

We certainly didn't require applicants to write separate letters to each section!

But then, we were always told that we provided a "Rolls Royce Service".....