To wish I'd never claimed tax credits

[StillCantDecideOnaUsername]

I only started claiming a few years ago when my income dropped as I was on maternity leave. I am now paying back one overpayment of 3k at £200 a month and currently disputing another overpayment of 6k. The amount of financial and emotional stress the situation is causing makes me wish I never claimed in the first place and tried to manage without. I have done a lot of research on TC overpayments and it seems that it is so common, surely this just goes to show that the system is not working!!!

how come people have such over payments?

Because they don't tell you how its calculated, so people cannot double check they're being paid their tax credits correctly, and they're a bunch of incompetent idiots.
I was glad when they re-did the levels you could claim at a few years ago, and we earnt too much to be able to claim them. I was sending a weekly letter to them telling them how many hours I worked each week!

Yes same as pps - letter says you've been underpaid last year so here's a bit more. Next year a letter saying you've had too much and we're taking it out of this year. Next year saying oooh last year you didn't get much, here's a handout - next year ''we're taking this off you per month 'cos you've had too much''. And on and on and on. 15 years odd i think now. Too much not enough too much not enough ... How the hell can you keep track of all that?! And all through it you've been honest and answered all their questions.

I think judging by a lot of posts here we've got off lightly then with our £1200 debt at the end of 15 years! Glad to be off the bloody benefit now!

It isn't just tax credits though - I got so used to letters telling me that my housing benefit had been overpaid and I owed them x amount which had to be repaid IMMEDIATELY-or-else that I stopped my claim.

I rang up every time and asked why I had been overpaid and how it had been worked out, and used to get 'we can't tell you how it happened, you owe the money, now pay up.'

So I guess that all benefit payments are pretty shit really.

Disaster here too. Finished paying back a £600 overpayment and fully expect another one next year even though I spoke to them on the phone and they said no more was owed.

We haven't claimed in 12 months and never again. My DH is foreign national and thinks our system is crap. He refuses to claim anything we might be entitled to (we're not) because we've been overpaid both child tax credit and housing benefit, and had to pay it back at great personal cost. Housing benefit was 2500 and had to pay back £250pm. Paying back this amount of debt with a toddler was mad.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/legal_money_matters/2897279-does-anyone-know-about-tax-credit-awards-does-mine-look-right?msgid=68238248#68238248

Check lougles post on last page as it breaks down how to work out tax credits

Oh and just to reiterate what a shower of shit tax credits are, despite the award going into my bank account, and only myself ever having contacted them, and that the overpayment comes from my account they have now stopped even sending me any letters or including my name on the letters they send to my husband! He just hands me the stupid brown envelope addressed to him and let's me get on with it. I have no idea why I've suddenly been wiped from the address bar!!

tc seem like such a nightmare - does anyone know how they calculate entitlements?

Randomly checked this post and am shocked.

If they make a f*cking mistake and overpay people (because, surely, they calculate the payments themselves... not the people applying for TC), then they should be the ones being penalised! They should... just maybe... get better systems that don't make such mistakes? Surely, that's the way to go? But they will never get them unless someone sues the pants off these people.

I don't even know how they can justify overpaying people by accident!!!

We were told we had been overpaid and I'll be honest I couldn't face the fight to dispute them . We arranged a low monthly payment over a long period of time, it suits us.

We then had a nasty letter from a debt collection agency for the amount we'd arranged with HMRC, demanding immediate payment. We called the debt collecting agency with our reference number from HMRC saying it was being paid.We received a letter within that week from debt collectors telling us they had no further interest as it was sorted (paraphrasing)

Utter incompetence from HMRC.

Similar we are paying back about £15 a month have been for last 15 months yet they admit that they massively underpaid us last year but nothing they can do! Apparently if your earnings change by £5k they can ignore it and the fact my local authority employers couldn't process my maternity leave properly.

That's the issue I think snowbells. They aren't accountable to anyone. They frighten people with their demand letters and talk of thousands being owed and there seems to be nothing we can do!

It never ends. Every year I get demands from a different debt collection agency for some random amount from a fair few years ago and every year. Then I ring tax credits, get the details I need to give the debt collection agency to prove I don't owe anything. Tax credits don't even know how to stop it full stop

I haven't claimed them for years now, I'd rather grate my face off.

I claimed a few years ago. Supplied all my details and we were awarded something like £12 a week. when I renewed they said I wasn't entitled to anything and I now owed them. I don't know how as I gave exact wages, we didn't get any pay rises and didn't have any child care. Ended up paying back more than I got from them.

Never claimed again until the last 2 years, I now owe them £1200.

Never ever will I claim again.

I've also found that depending who you get on the HMRC phone makes life easy or fucking shit.

My advice to anyone in this situation is first don't even bother trying to communicate or negotiate with HMRC.
Look at all the information on this website Tax Credit Casualties and then skip straight to the step of contacting your local MP for advice/support. You can find out who your local MP is on this website www.ukpolitical.info/Finder.htm

I was floored to receive a letter from HMRC stating that I had a fine of over a grand and a £10k overpayment to pay due to my apparently incorrectly stating my earnings/childcare costs [after a random audit was conducted]. I was completely bamboozled as all my figures were correct to the best of my knowledge and I had the paperwork to prove it! Well HMRC had me running around the houses with differing information given over every phone call with them and their refusing to respond to the letters I sent recorded delivery... In the end [after about 12 months of stress and worry] I asked my local MP to get involved and lo and behold the issue was resolved within a month. I got a letter from HMRC apologising for their initial error and the stress they caused, they also wrote off the alleged overpayment and fine and credited £100 into my account as a 'goodwill' gesture.

So yes, HMRC can and do get it massively wrong and it is worth getting your MP to fight your corner for you.

Dh is an amputee and used to qualify for motability. Then his walking got good enough to not need it, so he didn't apply for it again.

When we filled in the first forms - YEARS ago, he then qualified for the disability element of WTC. A few years down the line, he no longer qualified due to his own circumstances improving and different requirements on the forms (which never seemed to be the same 2 years running!) .

We got a letter saying we owed them £3K. Backdated. Which really annoyed me as DH did qualify back then, but by the current criteria he suddenly didn't but they wanted it all back.

We didn't bother appealing etc as were doing sort of ok and could get by by letting them absorb the amount they were going to give us to pay back the debt. What we'd have done if we'd needed the money more than we did, I don't know.

Oh, and my MP also made the debt collection letters go away gamerchick

It's bloody shit isn't it

We were overpaid by approx £3k despite keeping them constantly informed of increased hours and earnings. Im paying £55 a month back, added to normal outgoings I have very little left over and still they expect to me to be able to pay more I could understand a couple of hundred as overpayment but £3k! I didn't think we got that much from them in the year.

The last year we claimed, they wrote to tell us that the income limits had lowered but they were going to pay us what we would have got before. Hence we'd be building up an overpayment of £2k between August and march, which they would then invoice us for in full in April, before closing our file (as we earn too much the following year).
I asked them not to overpay, just pay what we are entitled to over the Aug-mar period then close the file. Impossible they said, the system says you'll be in hardship so you have to take it now.
I just stuck it in a savings account over the months then paid the big invoice when it duly arrived in April.
Fucking pointless.

Christ the whole thing is a nightmare.
We had an £800 overpayment here because the plonker on the phone applied my reduction in wages to my husband as well. The reduction is income was due to being on mat leave, in a time when partners couldn't share it-and even if they could we both couldn't have been off at same time for it. The cheque was sent to use months before the letter explaining what it was for or how it had been worked out, we assumed it was a tax rebate to start with! Obviously banked it and spent it then got the oh we've overpaid you pay it back now letter.
Luckily I had written down the time, date and name of person handling each call and sent a 3 page complaint letter after hours on the phone figuring out how it happened and they sent me an apology letter and wiped the debt.
I keep saying I'm going to frame that letter!
Seriously though if anyone needs to use tax credits I would make lots of notes, they need to be held accountable for their mistakes if they can't make the system simpler than can at least do that!
We keep being told by everyone we must be able to claim and I think we likely are eligible but I wouldn't bother again, we can manage so we will manage without all that!

I always told them off every change of circumstances. I also had receipts for all my childcare. They randomly decided that I owed them £6000 as they had no record of an hour long call I had to a change of circumstances officer!!! As I did it over the phone nearly a year previously I had no evidence I had called them.

They also said that they didn't believe my childcare costs although a reputable nursery gave a statement saying I'd paid it and I could demonstrate it via my bank statements.

They wanted£100 a week back!!! I got the payment details from them and set up a standing order for £40 a month. They accepted that for 3 years then passed it over for debt collection!!!

I rang them and they said I had to pay more. Eventually we settled on £55 a month. I would never claim a penny again. It's not worth the hassle.

We were overcharged the first year we claimed. When we applied I asked them to send me a copy of the magic formula for working it out (I'm boring like that), realised they were over paying and put the money to one side.
At the end of the year I transferred it back to them, the following week they paid it back saying they had underpaid me.
They confirmed they had overpaid me doing the final paperwork for the year so I just transferred what they were deducting from the savings account for the next few years.

Nowadays I tell them our expected income is several thousand more than I expect it to be at the beginning of the year and phone them again with figures in November if there is a difference between what I've declared and what we are going to earn.
I would rather have an under payment than have to repay.

I don't get anything other than child benefit so not sure how it works but I don't understand how they can overpay you by £3k and 6k? If you were awarded say £100 per month wouldn't you have noticed when the payment went up without warning/new forms to say £200 a month?
If my work randomly started paying me more, then unless it was a figure smaller than probably £50, then I would notice (therefore this is the only thing I have to compare it to)

They are absolute law unto themselves after we got a huge demand we got our MP involved. He came back that he was told it was none of his business