To find the claiming of WTC too stressful and to just stop?

[NapQueen]

Submitting the initial claim, fine, quick check of the annual update, fine. But ive now had two "random" compliance checks whereby I have to send all invoices, contracts, bank statements, etc.

We get around 30% of our childcare bill back in tax credits and yes it really does help and we would be up a bit of a creek if that went but oh my word its like they want you to stop claiming.

I haven't even made an initial claim.. I'm too confused about the whole thing. Who is eligible? Who knows

Of course they do. The ideal goal is to be self reliant isn't it, leaving benefits for those who need it if temporarily out of work or ill? It always used to be like that but it seems expectations have changed.

Really? Oh wow. I'm so not looking forward to this. Claimed as self employed for the first time last year. I'm just finalising my earnings for the year so that I can send an updated claim form for the year, and I'm dreading the hoops they're going to make me jump through.

Yep. I'm self employed and stopped claiming because it got too stressful and horrible trying to comply with their requirements.

I thought new claims were UC now, maybe depends where you live? We've been Ok with them, no checks etc. Not sure why some seem to get checked more than others, seems unfair.

DH self employed here too.

Ive susequently enrolled dc2 into his "free" 30 hours nursery starting September. Our current CM doesnt offer funded hours but weve been using her for 6 years. I cant bear it any longer being "checked" so bloody often that we will just have to stop.

New claims here are still WTC, not UC.

Ah crap, I have no choice but to claim WTC. Can't afford to live otherwise.

HMRC are going to be on my case because I earned less than the minimum wage per hour of working. But, I can show that it increased over the course of the year, and this year will be better still so fingers cross it won't be too difficult. (ha, ha, ha, ha..... )

Or maybe because I don't claim housing benefits? Can't remember....

When claimed childcare very year without fail we would be audited. Ended up by cheap printer/scanner so I could print or copy everything

Thankfully I can use work photocopier etc as we dont have a PC at home.

For copying these days I use Google drive on my Android phone, you can create multipage PDF documents using your phone camera as the scanner.