tax credit overpayments new report published

webwitch

I am going to try and take Friday afternoon off work and go to CAB office. Gathering as much paper work together as I can, I'm glad now that I made copies of all the letters I sent to TC offices. I just feel that I am being bullied into paying all this money back without an explantion and that I can't win. They just bulldoze their way into our lives and demand what they want, not caring how it affects people.
thanks

homealone_2

homealone wrote:

i have just had my second appeal against £8890 turned down with the same crap excuse of they think i should have been aware i was receiving too much money. i have had an islington peoples rights officer involved when she is not on annual or sick leave but it has made little difference, three years on i am no nearer to sorting it out!!! but it doesnt look good, god knows how they will expect me to pay it back. i am since on disability benefits but my husband is working so dreading how much they will expect in monthly repayments??

9 months on and things are no different!! a few months ago they sent a notice about another over payment of £1206, this i did agree with and set up a monthly repayment of 323.19 and stated that this admission had nothing to do with the 2003/2004 amount of £8890. i still stand by the fact that i did tell them of my marriage. i have had 4 different people covering the case from peoples right and all they do is send an initial letter saying the same thing " it was error on their part and not mine" i have now received a letter from peoples right which was attached to one sent to tax credits. they told them same thimg not my fault. but letter they sent to me said there is leittle more they can do and i may need to end up paying it all back!!! god knows what i will do!!! we dont earn enough to pay them back.. has anyone got any advice?????

mrs_messer

We have just been informed that we have an overpayment of 2100 I appealed but they didnt accept it. Then I got a letter from them saying I'd missed payments and was behind with repayments back to them, I rang them and they agreed that I hadn't made an arrangement to repay it back at all so how I could be behind with them and receiving threatning letters? After doing a review over the telephone - got cut off twice and had to restart each time, they decided my husband and I had minus £800 a month to live on so they said they could take £10 a month and its going to take until 2027 to repay :eek: I tried to appeal but they disregarded what we said, so we're stuck with more debt! :embarasse If they get everything else wrong, how do we know the repayment amounts are right!

Dammam

Dammam wrote:

We've been phoning weekly about this, but the operator tells us the case has been escalated and we can do nothing but wait.
Then, when I got into work this morning there was a message on my phone to call Revenue & Customs - I thought they had resloved it all!

Called back to be told that we owe £3400 and they required payment. I explained that we have had no payments since October 2005 and that we were CLAIMING money from that time. She told me that I should call the tax credits hotline and ask them to put something on the system for the collections team to see (even though there are apparently a stack of notes about this on the system already). I asked why they couldn't just speak to them themselves, but she said they're different departments and don't interract! Unbelievable.
So I called the hotline and got them, eventually, to put a note on the system - somewhat reluctantly I might add. They also said they were going to send me a dispute form, although I don't actually dispute the overpayment. That said, I dispute the £3400 - a figure that seems to change without reason. Now I guess I sit and wait yet again.

In the meantime I've written to my MP to try and enlist his help.
I just wish I'd never applied for the damned things. I'm fairly pragmatic and laid back about things, but this has got me so stressed it's unbelievable.


Note: Got a very helpful reply from the MPs PA already. Quite a shock to get such prompt attention!

Just to update you, and to give those awaiting some positive action a little hope, we got a call from the Tax Credits people today saying that they do indeed owe us money and will be sending us a cheque in the next 10 working days. Why a cheque? Well, apparently, the reason that this has dragged on for a year is that whenever they try to set up our payments on the system, it does not accept that we have any children (we have 3) and therefore says we are not entitled to tax credits, so they will have to pay us manually.
Why they have never told us that this was the problem is beyond me, and why it has taken a year to do anything about it is even further beyond me.

I can't help thinking that my MPs scathing letter to Dawn Primarolo has had something to do with the sudden activity to sort my problem. Seems it's the only way to get anything done, sadly.

diamond_dave

I have just read the posts about Tax Credits and can advise you all not to give up. I have been fighting the TC office since I received my first notice of overpayment in February 2004. I think that they have demanded about £8k in overpayments and I have consistantly fought against this. It would take a genius to even begin to understand the figures that they throw out, and the information/explanation changes day to day. They have finally agreed that the initial overpayment - there was none! -should not be repaid, and so am am now fighting for the next overpayments. I too have enlisted the help of my local MP, but to date she has not been too successful. Today, I received yet another demend for £399 for the 05 -06 period! In a recent letter I informed them that on conclusion of this farce, I would be sending them a bill for several hundred pounds- I've yet to hear from them about that.I think that the most frustrating thing about all this is that you can only speak to a call centre operator - and never the same one, and that the information given is always different. Best of luck to you all.

deb

i have been overpaid by a couple of hundred pounds - kept ringing the helpline to tell them that i didnt think i was entitled to an tax credits and could they stop paying me - they said they couldnt do anything until teh new review pack came out at the beginning of this year. when this eventually can out and i returned it to them - they confirmed that i had been overpayed. i rang them and arranged to repay by dd but with the dd info they sent me an appeal form. upon reading this i decided to appeal as i had told them to stop my payments and they did not do anything about it. teh appeal was unsuccessful - they wrote back and said that i still have to repay the money. my question is - is it now my responsibility to get in touch with them to arrange repayments? i have not had anything from them telling me HOW to repay - is this down to me? I am just worried that they will come back to be and try and charge me interest and stuff as i have not paid back what they say i owe. on the other hand - i dont really want to ring them and volunteer to give them the money as they have not told me how and when they want it paying back. Any advice very much appreciated!!!

thendongofti

Hi,
My husband is self-employed, and his income varies throughout the year, so our Tax Credits are a 'guesstimate' for much of the time before his tax returns are submitted. I'm not working as I'm expecting our third child next month, and till recently we were each receiving £70 weekly in tax credits (working/ child). This was a great help as we've been trying to get on our feet financially and don't seem to be able to quite manage it despite cutting our outgoings as much as possible. Recently we were notified that we were owed £3,000 in tax credits from 2003-2004. This was great! However, the next week we were informed that we owed aprox £3,000 in tax credits for years 2005-2006, and our weekly payments would also be reduced to £16 (would be £22, but the rest was being taken to pay off the overpayment). The drop in weekly payments really hit us hard & for the past three months our finances have descended into chaos- resulting in over £500 of bank charges for going overdrawn & direct debits not being paid, etc... This in turn has resulted in more charges and more chaos! I assumed that the TCO would be able to pay themselves back- as it were- from the money we owed, and were owed, but apparently they have to pay us- then my husband has to take a day off (losing a day's wages & paying someone to cover his work too..) book an appointment at the Tax office, and pay them the money back again. Crazy!!

A couple of months on and no sign of the money they owe us- for some reason they had to pay it into the bank account that was registered with them in 2003- even though I told them that it no longer exists- then wait for the money to be returned & pay it into my husbands existing bank account! We have chased & chased, but the money seems to have vanished along the way and no-one at the TCO can tell us where it has got to and when we can expect to receive it! Now, our original good intentions to pay back the money straight away have lapsed...If we ever do receive this money owed us from 2003-2004 we have more pressing debts (such as our credit card )with outrageous interest rates that we need to clear first if we stand any chance of getting back on our feet again. I have spoken to the TCO and they say that as we are already repaying them- albeit a measely few pounds- out of our weekly credits then we do not need to do anything further unless the next review stops our payments altogether- in which case we should have at least 12 months to repay the debt. My fear was being asked for the whole lot at once, or court summonses, etc... to recover what we owe them. I feel that now we really need to prioritise our debts, and this- being interest free (or so I've been led to believe) comes way down the list. Reading all these posts has made me start to doubt the wisdom of this again- Sorry this is so long & rambling- I'm trying to get my head around it all too! Does anyone know if what the TCO have led me to believe is right, or would we be crazy not to use any money we recieve in underpayments to repay what we owe? I just want to get out of debt, and it is things like our credit card that seem to be doing the worst damage to our outgoings. How far can the TCO go to recover this money- the lady I spoke to on the TCO helpline seemed reasuringly laid back about how quickly we repaid, but lots of people seem to have been threatened with being taken to court etc... and I can't face anymore of this type of stuff at the moment!! Any advice would be welcome!!
-- harrassed mum of soon-to-be- three.

bluecastle

I feel quite lucky in comparison to most people here - I actually had some success with the WTC people.

I tried unsuccessfully for over a year to get them off my back after they overpaid me and tried to claim the money back. I repeatedly replied to their letters citing my initial allegation that the overpayment was their fault and according to their literature I wasn't liable for this.

Finally I got a letter from a named individual at the WTC (perhaps part of some new customer relations drive?) and I managed to make a deal with the WTC people based on use of lots of legalese and the fact that they were in error. The amount I owe them is now 75% less than they originally claimed.

It's a step-down for me in that I still owe them money, but 75% less of a worry.

webwitch

After taking the advice from this forum to go to citizens advice office about my over payments I was then told to contact my local MP's office. I now have good news.....TCO say it was there mistake, they had wiped one of my sons completely off their system (he was only to be taken off from when he didn't return to school) so I do not owe the £1017, in fact they owe me £480.:j yippee, but before I can get too excited about that they are putting this money towards paying back a £600 overpayment from 2005-2006(which I know I do owe).
Anyway after 2 years of demand letters, unhelpful phone conversations, no response from appeal, my letters never being answered and finally being issued with a citation to appear in court, the stress and worry, my local MP's assistant sorted all this out within 2 weeks for me. I am still angry that the TCO can put people through all this, but my advice to anyone is don't give up talk to citizens advice and go to your local MP, don't let the TCO wear you down.
Good luck to everyone, I hope your outcomes are as favourable as mine and thanks to this forum for the advice and for making me realise I was not the only one being pursued by the TCO

Dammam

Dammam wrote:

Just to update you, and to give those awaiting some positive action a little hope, we got a call from the Tax Credits people today saying that they do indeed owe us money and will be sending us a cheque in the next 10 working days. Why a cheque? Well, apparently, the reason that this has dragged on for a year is that whenever they try to set up our payments on the system, it does not accept that we have any children (we have 3) and therefore says we are not entitled to tax credits, so they will have to pay us manually.
Why they have never told us that this was the problem is beyond me, and why it has taken a year to do anything about it is even further beyond me.

I can't help thinking that my MPs scathing letter to Dawn Primarolo has had something to do with the sudden activity to sort my problem. Seems it's the only way to get anything done, sadly.

We got our money last Tuesday! Over £3500 in the bank before Christmas, what a result.

Now waiting for the letter saying they made a mistake and gave us too much.

Your MP is definately the route to take.