tax credit overpayments new report published

taxcreditvictim

This Tax Credits is a complete nightmare and I wish I had never claimed.

My problem started last summer when I was sent the renewal form back 6 weeks late as I am self employed with summer being the main season when I work all the hours when I am not sleaping or driving.

Anyway because the sacred form was late I was told I had to repay all the Tax Credit I had received for the whole year 2006 to 2007 ( plus a bit from 2005 for reasons unknown) total over 1900 pounds.

I tried to get them to take this from my ongoing claim but they refused saying my "old claim" was "ended" and that the 2007 to 2008 claim was a "new claim" and couldn't be used to fund the "Overpayments". ( I'm absolutely boiling with rage that these imbeciles call this 2000 pound fine for a late form an " Overpayment " )

Anyway during this time, I made my second mistake in filling out a claim form and despite sending a covering letter saying they were not to pay me any money, only to use it to fund the repayment of the "overpayment " all of a sudden cheques started arriving. I cashed the cheques and used the money to write a cheque for 1900 and something to clear the overpayments.

While this was going on one of my 2 children moved out on 5th November so I wrote to both the TCO and child allowance people the very next day. Child allowance was ammended but not the Tax Credit.

I then got a statement saying they wanted to pay me even larger amounts of money. Despite my income rising at that time, they wanted to pay me 3000 pounds for 2007-8 and around 5000 pounds for 2008-9.

When I repayed all my 2006-7 tax credits I wrote a letter telling them it was wrong. They cashed the cheque but it appears never read the letter.

I wrote to my local MP, (income £61,820 plus £147,653 expenses) , the Chancellor of the Exchequer ( income £138,724 plus expenses
£136,854 expenses ) and leader of the opposition ( £132,317 income plus £143,385 expenses)

Leader of the oposition sent a standard letter saying they are "working on proposals".

Chancellor of the exchequer said he would leavie it to my local MP to anser.

My local MP enclosed a reply from TCO which took 3 pages to say if the form is late you have to repay everything.

Now we are another year on and they have finally noticed one of my children has moved out and so want me to repay 1500 pounds I told them not to pay me in the first place. I have told them to end my claim when no overpayments are due but it appears they have ended my claim already leaving me with a debt. I have written another letter for them to lose asking them to take it out of my 2008-9 entitlement but don't hold out much hope.

The question is how do you get out of the Tax Credits system. Despite spending years of building up a good business I am considering emigrating due to the Tax credits and the absurdly high levels of Taxation here even when on a modest income ( 20% income tax, 8 % NI, 17.5% VAT and fuel Tax of 1/4 my income and other taxes/charges/fees.

fabwitch_2

If those of you who were over paid have to pay it back . What about those of us who were under paid . Since 2002 my IB was taking into account for our tax credits and we ended up getting £38 a month tax credits. This year I got my tax credit forms and my IB was not mentioned and they said tax credit was going up to £200 a month. A massive increase. I phoned them up as I assummed it was a mistake, but was told because I was on IB before 1995, it should never have been taken in to account for tax credits. When you have been putting my IB on all previous claims I was told I should be intitled to a refund. Yet I have just found out that if you have not been paid enough tax credits you can only get three months back dated. How is this fair when they can demand the money back from those who were over paid in the last few years but not give refunds to those who were not paid enough. Utter madness.

stitchup

I,m confused about the hole set up, we are a family of four, me self employed my partner part time employed , 2 kids at school 1 12yrs the other 15yrs old, we get £50.0 a week child tax credit but we dont get working tax credits, we was told 2 limits before you get any help, 1 was £13.000 the other was £17.000 so what is it if we are told 2 figures, do you get help if the combined income is less than £13k or £17k?

Thanks for any clarification.

susanthunt

Hi
This is my first posting on tax credits - but we've been told to pay them more than £4000. The first we heard of it was a letter from their REcovery Dept which said "DEspite being told about overpayments in the past you have not yet repaid the amount due."
We had not received ANY letters relating to most of this. (We've had a long running dispute over an overpayment in 03-04 when we made our first claim.)
Turns out the amount they've added - almost £3k relates to 04-05. They say we failed to tell them our income by the deadline so they stopped payments and wanted anything they'd paid us given back.
We did return their stupid form!! However, we got a letter in oct 04 claiming that they hadn't had our figures. We rang them and were told they could take the info by phone and we shouldn't worry because it was all now sorted out.
We've contacted our MP and he took it up on our behalf. HMRC have written to him claiming they wrote to us at least 5 times between April 04-05 and NEVER got any response.
So, how do they explain that we have a form dated october showing payments would stop because they hadn't had any income details from us (I had written name and team no of the guy we spoke to that day by phone on form - so we know we spoke by phone in October ) or the one dated 3 days later saying "Thank you for providing us with information" and setting out new payments for the remainder of the year.
TCO claim we knew about the "overpayment" - although as someone has rightly described it it's actually a fine since the money was due to us. I have a drawer full of forms. They have failed to answer why, if we were overpaid, they paid us as usual in 05/06, 06/07 and 07/08. Their literature says if you';ve been overpaid, they will take it from future awards - so why didn't they?
They have revised their literature so that it now says if you don't contact them they will reclaim any money paid to date but at that time, the literature said (paraphrasing) .. if we don't receive figures from you we will settle your award on the basis of the information we currently have and this could lead to an under or overpayment". The provisional figures they already had WERE correct so the amount paid was correct!
How can they change their rules retrospectively - and now claim that the new rule applies to our money from 04?
They have so far given no satisfactory answer to why they didn't take back any overpayment from future awards.
Our MP has written to them again saying that we DID return the form in time and that when they wrote in october saying that the money had been stopped, we spoke to them by telephone and then received an amended award notice soon after. If they hadn't heard from us AT ALL in 04/05 as they claim, why would they have issued an amended award?
He's also asking them why they didn't follow their own Code of Practice which states they will take overpayments from your future awards. This happened four years ago and they are only now claiming it has to be repaid.
Sorry, this probably makes little sense - I'm just so furious that they can get away with this.
Anyone know what ever happened with regard to earlier posting about someone in shadow chancellor's office claiming efforts to reclaim old money are illegal ?
Thanks

SuziQ

susanhunt-we are in avery similar situation to you,as they are relaiming due to a form they say they didnt recieve.I was on the phone several times at the time they say the form was outstanding but no one mentioned it-their reply to our MP's letter is that I would have had to have asked them had they recieved it,or told them it was missing as they don't pre-empt this sort of thing. (why can't these highly sophisticated systems they have have an automatic message that comes on screen when a case is opened and a form is overdue? Ooh sorry-too logical!)
Their letter to us states 'we are not saying you didn't send it-we are saying we didn't recieve it.'
Their original policy in place at the time they are reclaiming for me was that if the family were in fact entitled-as in your case and mine-they wouldn't persue repayment as there is no real loss to the public purse. They have since changed their policy to 100% reclaimation and are applying this retrospectively. I have not been provided with the breakdown of figures (I am concerned that the £3,000 they are reclaiming from me includes a lump sum from the previous year when they also said we had been overpaid and they admitted fault-it happened to use the previous year before that too,so that this is the THIRD time we have had this problem and the stress is unbelievable.) I have not been sent transcripts of the many conversations I had at the time of the so-called missing form,and have regular demands for repayment threatening court action even though no decision letter has even been sent-I also have it writing that they do not do this when I have 3 such demands in my file.Our MP contacted them via their hotline last July,we got a letter in November answering a few but not all of his questions on our case and since then all we have recieved are demands for payment,yet when I contacted the appeals office no decision had been listed on our case as late as this April.
I have no contact with them since April and am awaiting further information as I have said,this whole thing is coming up to 2 years in dispute in October!
I am currently living solely on benefits and to repay this money,that my family was always entitled to,will throw me into severe hardship.


I feel your case is much stronger than mine and you will win because of your phone call-you need to demand the recording of that,once you have that you will have won your case so I wish you well.

little_dumplings

I've just been told I need to pay back £7K from 06-07, and £4K from 07-08 as I didn't reply to their forms (I spoke them loads on the phone but can't remeber what I said duh) They told me they would send me a dispute form..but the info they gave me was that unless I had been in hospital or someone close had died i didn't have any 'exceptional circumstances' with which to appeal. Surely they can just check with tax office etc to see I was entitled to it...I'm a single parent working full time to have a better life...now I know i'd have been better off on benefits! I'm sooooooo MADDDDDDD!

mrsnicholls

i informed them on a claim form i took 6 months maternity leave (@£2 odd a week as 1st £100 isnt acnowledged) followed by 6 months unpaid (but still employed), then i went back to work for about 12 weeks before bieng signed off sick (again only 1st £100 taken).

i then got a form back saying as their records from year before showed i earnt more thats the figure they took.

it took hours on the phone + 3 award notices to sort out + make them see!!!!

kenzy

Hi from a newie.
I have just recieved a letter this morning from them asking for 2k.I did fill in a dispute form last year and a letter came back with ""we have identified an administative problem that means we have to review a small proportion of tax credit awards for earlier years In light of new information we have discovered that in certain cases we did not follow the correct procedure This letter is just to make you aware that yours is one of the cases where we need to check.
However we would like to reassure you that this review will not lead to your tax credits awards being reduced ( i wasnt recieving any) or to ask for any more payments for theses earlier years You do not need to do anything as a result of this leter we just wanted to keep you updated.

and this morning a year or so later i get a demand for this money pay up or else just what am I supposed to do now. I am stumped havent got a clue they have totally bamboozled me. help!!!

180

Hi all.. tax credit problems?

Go here for help and advice.. http://taxcc.org/

Go to the forum here... http://familytaxcredit.forumco.com/


This is free and run by Mums who found themselves in Tax Credits hell..

Letters not being answered ? how did this overpayment appear ?

All things the HMRC who run the Tax Credit system seem to ignore, anything that makes them having to explain what went wrong, is always ignored and they will blame you for all their failings,,


Dont put up with this, you have rights.. although to speak to some of the advisers.. you cant appeal...oh yes you can.. the road will be long and hard, But you can win..join the fight today..


Good luck

savvy

little_dumplings wrote: »

I've just been told I need to pay back £7K from 06-07, and £4K from 07-08 as I didn't reply to their forms (I spoke them loads on the phone but can't remeber what I said duh) They told me they would send me a dispute form..but the info they gave me was that unless I had been in hospital or someone close had died i didn't have any 'exceptional circumstances' with which to appeal. Surely they can just check with tax office etc to see I was entitled to it...I'm a single parent working full time to have a better life...now I know i'd have been better off on benefits! I'm sooooooo MADDDDDDD!

You can request all data held on you and they should then give you copies of screen shots, letters etc and telephone calls. I will warn thought that they aren't that meticulous! From the year they are disputing with me, they've omitted the most incriminating phone call (luckily I still have the bill to say I made it) and have left out the same year with all the screen shots.................no doubt that has more evidence that I am right and they are wrong :rolleyes:

How to do this and all letter templates are on the TCC website as 180 has posted above, and they are VERY helpful people. You're not alone in this