HMRC Tax Credit fraud - help?

[Anonymouse007]

Hi there,

I’m gonna cut straight to the chase because I really don’t know what to do & Mumsnet seems to be helpful at times like this!

I receive tax credits (working + child). Someone made a fraudulent claim for UC using my details (don’t know who it could be). This caused my TC to be stopped altogether. I’ve not been paid in 4 weeks.

I realised early on that something was going on so rang up HMRC. They made me do a bunch of stuff (file police report, ring UC, etc) and said to wait for their call. They said I would be on the urgent list. They gave 2-3 different deadlines for when they’d ring me with answers (today was the last deadline).

We have minimal funds coming in thanks to covid/furlough/life. It’s tough. Every time we ring HMRC they blow us off. We rang today 30min before the lines closed and they said “oh well there’s still a few mins and someone might ring.” Nobody rang.

We also found out they made incredibly stupid blunders (they rang the fraudulent application’s contact number instead of ringing us on the correct number - they even left them voicemails and only realised the issue when we rang them up after a few days for updates).

It’s a mess. Who should/can I speak to? Is there any way to solve this?

Long story short: victim of fraud. TC stopped, being investigated but no update and no helpful response from HMRC. Who to contact now?

[TheQueef]

MP and quickly, they will be busy but will have a higher up contact in HMRC.

[MidsomerMum]

Letter to your MP - explain situation clearly and what you need/want them to do to help.

[Calic0]

You could put in a complaint straight to HMRC (just google it, it will take you to a gov.uk site and link). These are usually dealt with fairly quickly and by a separate team to the one looking at the fraudulent claim. You could certainly contact your MP in the meantime but the internal complaints team won’t take it any less seriously if it comes from you initially.

It’s no consolation, but things on tax credits have blown up massively since the start of COVID and the likelihood is your case is in a work list somewhere and the staff just don’t have capacity to deal with it. This is what comes of reducing and reducing staff members across the civil service.