tax credit overpayments new report published

EverDecreasingCircles

Thanks for the link to www.taxcc.org whitevanwoman and savvy. I've had a look and found it's a great site. Looks like I may be using it very soon (won't bore you all with the details - yet).

EDC

Rosie101_2

Hello,
My issue is unrelated but i would appreciate any advice or help on my matter.

I recently went to the NHS dentist needing root canal treatment, they told me that they could undergo the treatment but there was no guarantee of a success, and I may need to go back and have it done again in time. However they did tell me i could go to a private dentist and they could undergo the treatment for £500 and the success rate would be 100% i.e eradicating the problem. I have decided to opt for this option however am cocerned on how i will raise £500.

Does anyone know of any financial support or help i could recieve on this matter???

Many thanks,

Rosie

SuperSeagull

My son and his ex wife split up in 2001 and the benfits people have just said that he must repay £450 that was paid to his wife when she was working. He has argued that he knew nothing about it but they said as the claim was in his name he is reponsible.

He has had an accident and is now on incapacity benefit whilst the injuries heal so they are going to just take the money before he gets any each week. Has he any grounds for disputing this as obviously he cannot account for what his wife did after they split up. Any advice would be appreciated.

[Deleted User]

We have to pay them back £650..only started claiming chid tax first time last year so i am proper peed off. We did everything they told us too, told them of every change and nw we are expected to live on £40 a week for 3 of us well they claim it back weekly. My daughter is just 10 mts old & half that money covers what she needs so not much left for food but of course they dont give a toss about that after telling them. My husbands money only covers all our bills and i have no job to go to after mat leave coz company in stuggle with recession and im struggling to get work but no one will help us. Im so peed of. Ive been in tears i already suffer pnd my husband is off work sick with stress from his place. we just did not need this on top. We have to send a dispute for bla bla but ent much hope in getting it settled :mad:
They recon its our fault OF COURSE..coz we told them are income had lowered which it had coz my mat money had stopped and i wasnt receiving jack all so that was correct but they recon we had told them our total household income had lowered to £18,000 which is !!!!!!!! coz my hubby earns 19,000 so why would we tell them that stupid idiots.

Wish i had never claimed...after all these years i still cant believe they are cocking up and people are even more hard up then ever. NO !!!!ing need.Monkeys can run there office better then them.
Sorry for the rant but i am soooo :mad: and tryna work how out we are gonna survive nw

whitevanwoman

Hi Jadey24, really sorry you're having problems but hopefully you will get the help you need from www.taxcc.org where you can download the dispute form and get instructions on how to submit your dispute. The website also tells you how to go about requesting a copy of the phone call recordings so that you can prove that you gave them the correct income details. If you look at the "How to dispute" section of the www.taxcc.org website, this is steps 1 and 2.

There is also a taxcc forum where you can post if you have got any questions or queries about your dispute and there are people there who can help.

Good luck, stick with it, it is possible to get OPs written off if you can prove it was their error and not yours. It's a long drawn out process unfortunately but once you have got your dispute submitted, any repayments should be put on hold until it is all sorted out.

homealone_2

whitevanwoman wrote: »

Am just about to tackle my 4th overpayment in 4 years of claiming with the help of www.taxcc.org - it arose because they did not deduct an emergency manual payment from the 3 months worth of backpayment they owed me whilst they took 3 months to incorrectly terminate my claim, omit to tell me that it had been terminated and that I would need to start a new claim and then they lost that new claim. I even got an apology and compensation for the delay and stress at the time when it was sorted - now it seems they sorted it wrong. How a govt agency can repeatedly demonstrate such incompetetance and negligence and continue to get away with it just beggars belief.

There has been a new development - in a statement from the Financial Secretary to the Treasury Steven Timm’s MP
“If .... Constituents have informed the tax credit office of errors on the award notice and if those errors have led to an overpayment, that overpayment is not recoverable. If you would like to draw my attention to any examples of that kind, that would be the outcome”

Also in a recent ITV "Tonight" programme, David Hartnett, the head of tax for HMRC said that that if anyone did think they had been treated unfairly by HMRC they could write to him and he would look into it. Here's a link to the programme http://www.itv.com/News/tonight/episodes/Takingonthetaxman/default.html

I will therefore be copying my latest dispute and complaint to both Stephen Timms and David Hartnett aswell as to my MP.

I suggest that you all do the same and make sure that the people at the top know what is really going on and lets see if they are as good as their word. Taxcc is currently putting together a list of people who feel that according to Stephen Timms, their OP should be written off so go to www.taxcc.org and check the latest news and forum and get your names on the list.

what would be the addresses to use to get in touch with david andd stephen?

whitevanwoman

homealone wrote: »

what would be the addresses to use to get in touch with david andd stephen?

Their addresses are on the Latest News page at www.taxcc.org in an article Let's Tell Timms and Hartnett 16 April 2009

Here is the direct link to the page - you will need to scroll down the page a little to the article : http://www.taxcc.org/News_TCC_Update.html

tinax0

please help - I don't know what to do. I moved to canada two years ago (nearly) now the tax people have sent me a bill for £1600+ for overpayments. I wrote the them disputing they sent a dispute form, filled that in they never got it, I called and they just sent me 10 copies of the same document outlining the over payment (each in a seperate envelope - posted to canada at their/taxpayers expense!) I was very vigilant about making sure they were always called about my hours, pay rises, childcare arrangements, increased feees etc. I even called them from the airport to cnfirm we were leaving the country that day.Now I have no written evidence to say I told them, and they are demanding money I just dont have and dont beleive I have been overpaid in the first place - what can I do?? It doesn't help that everything takes so long in the post and they refuse to deal on phone or email. BTW - the overpayment is from 2004-5 or 2005-6 I'm not sure which - their blinkin forms were sclealry tructured by a muppet who knows jack about displaying financial info.

whitevanwoman

tinax0 wrote: »

please help - I don't know what to do. I moved to canada two years ago (nearly) now the tax people have sent me a bill for £1600+ for overpayments. I wrote the them disputing they sent a dispute form, filled that in they never got it, I called and they just sent me 10 copies of the same document outlining the over payment (each in a seperate envelope - posted to canada at their/taxpayers expense!) I was very vigilant about making sure they were always called about my hours, pay rises, childcare arrangements, increased feees etc. I even called them from the airport to cnfirm we were leaving the country that day.Now I have no written evidence to say I told them, and they are demanding money I just dont have and dont beleive I have been overpaid in the first place - what can I do?? It doesn't help that everything takes so long in the post and they refuse to deal on phone or email. BTW - the overpayment is from 2004-5 or 2005-6 I'm not sure which - their blinkin forms were sclealry tructured by a muppet who knows jack about displaying financial info.

Hi Tina
First of all you are probably not aware that under the Freedom of Information and Data Protection Acts, you are entitled to request copies of all written information about you and your claim and copies of phone calls made to HMRC about tax credits. To do this you have to do a SARN request. More information about how to do this is in the "How to dispute" section of www.taxcc.org They have 40 days to provide you with this information and usually people seem to get the paperwork through but not the CDs of the recordings of the phone calls so you may have to chase these up and remind them of their legal obligations! Once you have got your paperwork follow the How to dispute instructions which tells you what to look for and how to spot HMRC errors or proof that you kept them informed. You will probably receive a thick pile of paper which looks very confusing at first but don't panic, put it all in date order and then sift through it very carefully checking all dates, details etc.

Secondly, the how to dispute section will also tell you how to submit a dispute and once a dispute is submitted, recovery of an overpayment should be put on hold. You should do this ASAP whilst waiting for receipt of your SARN info on the grounds that you are waiting for HMRC to provide paperwork that you believe will confirm that your OP is not your fault.

Thirdly, the link below is to a post on the tax credit casualties forum by Paula, the taxcc case worker, about overpayments and ex-pats. She deals with individual cases so it may be worth contacting her for help. Her contact details are on www.taxcc.org

This is the link to the forum post about overpayments and ex-pats : http://familytaxcredit.forumco.com/topic~TOPIC_ID~1171.asp

mrsayles

I've had my child tax credit renewal through and it says we owe them £632 but it's because I phoned and told them about my new job when I finished maternity leave and they didn't record this information. Is it worth disputing it as it was their error not mine?

Also, does anyone know how they calculate allowances? Are there any bands/brackets?

It's just that roughly our income went up around 14% (£21.5k to £24k) when I went back to work but because of this 14% increase in earnings we now owe them £630 which is a third of our total benefit for the year. It just doesnt seem right. Also our allowance for this year has been cut by 67% just because of earning an extra 2.5k. It makes me wonder if it's worth cutting my hours?

And one last rant!! They're stopping our payments altogether until the money has been paid back, I though they just take a little a month?

We're not the highest earners to say the least, I think this year between us it will be 26k and we have an 18 month old child. Child tax credit and child benefit are all we claim and even one of those is stopping now, it seems ridiculous.

Any advice would be much appreciated.