Tax Credit disaster...please please help

[WhollyShits]

Christol on a bike. I have had my tax credit renewal through. I have been overpaid by approx £3500!!! So, i will not be receiving ANY payments this year

I phoned up because i thought it must be a mistake. But it is true!! Not only will i receive no payments, but also they want me to repay the £3500

They overpaid me because they input my expected earnings for 2017-2018 as ZERO!!!

What the hell am i gooing to do?? This reduces my monthly income by over £300 plus whatever amount i need to pay them

I feel sick

Same thing happened to me, we are totally skint now despite both working full time and living quite frugally.

It's shite.

Do i really have to pay it back, even though it is their mistake??

You can get a hardship form and they can reduce your payments based on your outgoings.

Every single year they overpay me, despite me overestimating my hours at work.

It's truly crap.

I am on my own with 2 kids. I work full time hours and i am disabled. I am waiting for an operation with 6 month recovery. It couldnt have come at a better time!! FUCK

It’s happened to loads of people... several women in my office. Complete nightmare

Have you got the form they sent last year to confirm what your tax credits would be? What is stated as your income on that?

This happens a lot. You will have to repay but ring them up and be adamant that you can only afford a very low sum per month. In our case it happened because I gave the details of income etc over the phone and they didn't explain how they retrospectively re-assess at the end of every year. I think we paid £30 per month until it was all paid back.

So you shouldn't have qualified for any tax credits, but have been getting 300 a month?

tulip...i was thinking, i will dig that out. But, i dont think i need to?

Looking at my award letter for the coming yyyyeeearr...it wuotes the income for the LAST year and says you must notify them of a change of income. So it doesnt have any 'predicted earnings' stated. I know they ask you on the phone when you renew, so i thought that would have been written explicitly. I was worried that they would have stated predicted earnings as zero and i hadnt picked up the admin/data entry error. I know i wouldnt have SAID my earnings were zero on the phone!! I have always used the previous years figure

Llooks that way crotchet

My friend got let off £4000 because she said she didn't speek good English and hadn't understood ...she did ,she's crafty ..you could try that ..plus another friend has been over paid by £10,ooo..she's paying back the whole amount at £10 a week untill her child turns 18. They were really good and understanding with her as she's a single mum.

Are you meaning child or working tax credit?

I think they do this with everyone!

They gave me £6k, then a year later because they didn’t listen to me telling them my annual salary told me that I owed them £6k so reduced my payments for like forever

I wish sincerely that I had never bothered to claim in the first case, they have actually only had a negative impact on my life as a whole, because of their utter incompetence

Tax credit system is unfit for purpose

I got this. From experience there is no point appealing or complaining they don't care, even if its their mistake. Best thing is to just pay back the lowest amount you can and say you cannot afford more. At least then its manageable and it will be several years before they get paid back. The systems a mess an no-one wants to take responsibility for it.

£10 a month. They constantly fuck up.

Yes they constantly make mistakes, or just withhold money. But thats why everyone needs to work out their own entitlement not rely on the fact that this time TC might get it right.

DID you not think that when they started making the payments last April, gosh that seems a lot? Presumably they were paying you more than the year before or the same as the year before despite your income being higher?

They are quite lenient with overpayments, I rang them up in 2012 and got I had overpayments from 04/05/06 and was only paying 2.50 a week back to start with despite owing nearly £1k, since having a new partner I paid at £10 a week and literally just paid the last £40 off last month! WORk out what you can afford to pay off each week and ring them to discuss.

I was so careful to calculate projected income for myself and my partner. I told them exactly what it was. They put in £1 for me and £0 for my partner.
He would have known that would put me in the shit.

I have no idea why a human would be so aggressively incompetent.

I realized as the payments were higher than I had calculated.
I went into my online account and fixed it but even just in that couple of weeks they'd overpaid me so much my payments have halved and I'm struggling a bit.

Just call them and tell them how much you can afford.

I have to pay back about £2k (big bonus and payrise right at the end of the year) I called and told them I couldn’t afford more than £100 a month so they set that up. She would have gone lower and said to call back if circumstances change.

I'm sure you can request tapes of calls.

You can request tapes, but even if it is their mistake you have to pay it back

I had to pay back last year. Was panicking as I was off sick at the time.

So I phoned up having worked out a payment plan and did that.

They told me to expect an overpayment this year but my renewal said we were no longer entitled but not over paid this year.

Firstly, don't ignore it, HMRC are more helpful if you contact them and try to sort it out. But first, make a budget of your expenditure, include absolutely everything, all expenses for DC , food, annual costs like Christmas, Birthdays, insurance, haircuts, dentist, glasses..... then that will show you how much you could afford to repay each week.

Then ring HMRC on the phone number on the letter, tell them your situation, that you are disabled, and arrange a payment plan over as long a period as possible.

Alternatively, you could enlist your local MP to help you, seeing as you are disabled and will be disadvantaged due to their error.

Unfortunately though with HMRC, they do expect people to understand the figures and they would have expected you to realise that you were getting far too much.

We had to pay back an overpayment over a couple of years, we stopped claiming to so they couldn't mess up again. You can check your phone records then ask for copies of the recorded calls. Always write to them by recorded delivery and keep a copy.

I’ve just had the same but with my child benefit.
I’m waiting for my letter but have no fucking clue how to pay back £6k. Especially because dp has lost his job.