To think that the people behind the Tax Credits helpline...

[ICanHearYou]

..Should at LEAST be able to input numbers correctly?

They have missed off a 0 from my details so its all incorrect and I am short around £80 a week!

It takes Ages to phone them too, at least 25 mins on hold

gah

Thanks ssd, I suspected as much.

Thanks Clarinet - I did ring them, and again when it cropped up on last year's summary Name date and time noted just in case and a correct award given.

I do claim tax credits, just not the working element so I don't know why it wrongly stated I was in hospital or prison rather than, "you are not entitled as you do not work outside the home" or something similar!

The thing that annoys me most is that DH is counted as unemployed for tax credits. He is a full time student. We get no help with childcare as he is not working. Yet we are worse off than when he was! Student finance won't help because it seems I earn too much. I know it was our choice to have him take up full time study and long term we will hopefully benefit, so we are just living with it atvthe moment, but it is all so inconsistent and provides very little incentive to self improve. Full time students are not unemployed, they are not available to do childcare due to being at college/uni.

The sad thing is that no, I can't explain it, beyond the explanation already given about the income disregard. It's so stupidly complicated, I never fully got to grips with it. This was the early days though, when all the computer systems couldn't cope and GMTV did daily updates on how shit it all was.

TodaysAGoodDay - I always ring first thing in the morning. They open at 8 so that's when I call and I get try nearly straightway every time. A trick I have used in the past is selected the wrong option 'accidentally on purpose' and when someone has answered they have transferred me to the correct dept when I explain what I am trying to achieve. Don't think this helps you jump the queue any quicker but it means you don't have to stand on the phone for ages listening to all the annoying options just to get the one you want

Sorry to hijack but I'm hoping someone can help me with something before I call tax credits tomorrow .....

DP is self employed, I am employed through his business but paid very little.
Every single year I wait for our year end accounts before submitting our claim so that I give accurate figures rather than an estimate.

Last year was a good year for the business so DP profit/earnings went up. As soon as we had the year end I called to give the accurate figures. I fully expected for our claim to drop or stop completely which it has, we're not entitled to anything now which is fine ....... However they are saying we now owe them back everything that they paid us for last year!
How does this work when last years claim was based on his 2013 year end?
I've only ever given accurate figures.
Also to top it off DD has just started childcare 2 days per week and I already pay for DS childcare 2 days per week

lollipoppi, all I can say is....good luck with that!! I called them once to up my (minimum) wage by 4 hrs only, and started getting an extra £85 a week for a whole year.....massive overpayment, totally their mistake, I got CAB involved they wrote to them , all recorded letters, tax credits claimed they never got them in time.....jesus......

good luck, you'll need it

I think we also rang them early in the day.

am inspired to call them early so here goes....wish me luck

Our renewal notice came through, all the details on it were correct, even my earnings from two jobs which I'm guessing they got from HMRC. So no changes, but an increase in payments as DP was made redundant last year, so no earnings for him this year.

This increase has now prompted a stop in our housing benefit. Which if I'm being reasonable I understand, they obviously will think if I'm getting extra money my circumstances have changed, but they just stop the payment. Their payment run is on Fridays and I got the letter on Saturday so by the time I got the letter there was nothing I could do, we're a couple of hundred short for this week through no fault of our own. Sucks!

"all our operators are busy right now".......here we go........cue annoying phone music......

on now

wasnt too bad, 14 min wait
call early folks!!

The worst is when you get right through the automated bit and then they say 'nobody can speak to you now try later' and hang up.

very true

So did you have to pay it back ssd? I just don't understand how they have overpaid us when last years claim is based on the actual figures provided them from earnings in 2012/2013, the most recent figures I've submitted are from our earnings in 2013/2014 and I fully expected them to drop the tax credits but I don't understand why they are saying we have to pay back ALL of last years claim, in the sum of over £6000
There is absolutely no way we have the funds to pay this back, we are already £400 a month down from losing the tax credits

your current payment from them is based on last years figures and the assumption that you will earn the same. At the end of each year you send in what you actually earned and they decide how much you were actually entitled to. Then they balance up if you have been overpaid or underpaid.

so if you earned more that expected then you will have been overpaid and owe them money. If you still receive payments from them, they will just reduce the payment until the overpayment is used up. If you don't receive payments any more then you owe them money - not sure how it works then (have never yet been in that position).

It's just impossible to know how much DP will earn through the business until we have his end of year through from the accountants. I'm glad in a way were not receiving anything this year it's too fricking complicated!
Il call and speak to them tomorrow about paying back what we "owe"

I've had a problem with my national insurance number being mixed up with someone else. The new system which gets income from PAYE and automatically adjusts the payment had my income at almost 30k when I'm not working at the moment which added to dh wage put us over the limit for claiming. There's notes on the file about this problem yet they still stopped payments and told me it could take up to 10 weeks with no money until the renewal was processed even though they're well aware of the problem and I've been trying to get it sorted for years.

When I asked if there was any way to speed it up as I'd have nothing to feed my DCs with they're advice was to use a food bank.

Luckily national insurance were brilliant and got on to someone higher up in tax credits and it was sorted within a week, albeit with £20 of phone calls.

Then two weeks later they stuffed up again as someone put the 30k income back on the claim, cue another stressful week and £££ of phone calls to sort it.

It wouldn't be so bad if they'd given me the missed payments so I could pay back the money I'd had to borrow to pay the bills and feed the kids, but no they've spread it out to and extra £6 ish per week. If it were my cock up fair enough but its a problem tax credits are well aware of yet its me who's now got to pay off the debt I've got into.

Todays if your dial the number about 7.55 am by the time you get through the stupid system to the call centre its usually been answered pretty quickly for me (5-10 mins) which is better than the "we're very busy at the moment bye".

The whole speech about being able to do this or that online annoys me too. Do they really think we want to listen to the rubbish music and pay ££ for the privilege if it could be sorted online for free.

lolli, yes we had to pay the whole lot back, in fact we might still be paying some of it, I'm lost with it all. But pay it back at a rate you can afford, they took £40 a week off me which left me skint.

They've just refunded me the money I was owed initially which is great, so the nursery have been paid (mind you they have been simply amazing with us about it all) and I've been able to buy food which is always a bonus!

thats great!

I particularly enjoy the conversation with the automated woman...
'What are you phoning about'
'Child tax credit'
'You are phoning about a tax rebate, is that correct?'

need and to recover!

Lolli
You have my sympathy

We had a year where dh was unemployed for a while. They wouldn't increase the amount we got as they went on the figures from the year before (I'll never understand that, I think they got it wrong) A year later they won't give us more because our income is higher and dh is employed. (This I can understand as we don't need it so much)
They can't have it both ways but they did and we were well and truly messed around by them.