Furious with Tax Credits keep people in debt

[StarUtopia]

Oh I am SO ANGRY. Not been paid our child tax credits since May so just phoned up to ask why. We don't get much..just £10 a week but it all helps to pay our nursery bills and I am very grateful (we both work)

Rang just now. Apparently we now earn just over the threshold (P60 from Dh showed a £4k increase in pay this year vs last year) so that's why they've stopped. Ok, that's fine, totally understand.

However, we now owe them £1600 apparently. Because they base payments on last years incomes etc, they have overpaid us by that much.

I have so many transcripts where I have repeatedly asked, are you sure you have the right information from us, are you sure you are not paying us too much , are you sure that's what we are entitled to etc etc etc.

About 8 years ago they overpaid us by £6k and we've spent the last 6 years receiving a lot less than entitled to in order to pay off that debt.

To now find that again we have been overpaid has just devastated me. We are in debt still from last time ( live in our overdraft) I have no chance of finding that kind of money. The nice man (felt for him) said we won't be 'billed' until April next year and then can request it gets paid over a few years if necessary.

But what is the point of a system that says you're entitled to something and then turns round at the end (when you now do earn too much) And says, actually, you need to repay us now.

Any tips for sorting this out?

I always kept them informed of any changes and queried payments. They are completely inept and also have no clue how these awards are calculated as they enter everything on a computer and it spits out a figure, they have no idea how it reached that amount. This has nothing to do with people not providing correct information, its a combination of a broken system and HMRC outsourcing to a company that cannot handle things properly. This issue has affected many people.

They've overpaid me to the tune of 1900 quid... No communication just dropped my weekly payments to 40 quid! Don't get me started on becoming inegligble for WTC they didn't tell us about that either just stopped it. They don't give a shiny shit.

Same here. Close to 2500 they want back from me. Single parent , getting nothing from CMS or whatever they call themselves ever. Clawed my way from part time minimum wage jobs were I was grateful to get the help and as soon as I manage to not need them they hit me with a bill for the supposed debt.
I've been meticulous with keeping them updated over the years, expensive phone calls letting them know everything and sometimes when not needed just to cover myself and have piece of mind. So I thought. It's not like I was earning much to be difficult to work out!
It's pointless trying to fight it, I went down the appeal route , asked for every piece of information they had on me for 16 years of claims, the whole shebang. It just got increasingly confusing and the data was on hundreds of sheets of paper. I gave up after a year trying to work it out and argue with them they must be incorrect somewhere . I set up a payment plan and will be paying them until 2021 . I will be well rid. I clawed my way out of poverty and benefits trap and now I'm in debt to them.
I am thankful I have only one child as I can't imagine what a balls up they would make if they were dealing with multiple childcare and children coming up to further education in different years.
A website that helped with template letters and offers support is " tax credit casualties" . It's grim reading on there, people in awful situations through no fault of their own making.
Tax credits frightened me , I will never claim them again hopefully.
Sorry ! That was a bit of a rant!

They slapped my aunt with a £1000 debt 2 years after her youngest child (my cousin) had left school and home. Apparently she didn't update them although she has clear evidence that she did.

She's going to paying them back for another 2 years, my cousin is 25 now and hasn't lived at home for 7 years.

Fair enough - wasn’t trying to be goady and sincere apologies to OP as I didn’t take in the fact you’ve quite clearly been trying to tell them as stated in the OP. Duh.

Sounds like a shit system and you have my sympathy. Glad at least to see that they don’t demand instant repayment. Doesn’t surprise me with HMRC it’s an across the board issue of them overpaying / underpaying and then the admin hassles of fixing it that makes no sense given the technology available to them.

People argue about whether big corporate tax avoidance or low scale cash cash in hand ducking costs more. Wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if the inefficiency and incompetence of HMRC itself costs as much as either. That’s not a slight on the staff that work there, they are suffering cuts as much as any govt deparetment, but it doesn’t get the headlines that police and NHS cuts do.

And they seem to be at the mercy of the computers too. They don't want tax from me for a year as they think this year I am paid at source under PAYE (just because last year I cashed my pension (and tax comes off that at source under PAYE which they take (wrongly) as employment income). I don't mind as the cash casn sit there until Jan 2019 but for someone else it could come as a big shock. Goodness know what will happen next year when so many of us come under the new digital VAT for the first time when they haven 't even said what software we will have to buy.

I rang them to tell them circs changed last year and said I just want too come 📴 them.

The man said... The only way to get the top stop is to stay you have higher income coming in.

I was staggered. He said lie! I said it's an owellian night mare dept, I'm not going to add lies to the mix.

I'm dreading this too op.

I agree that it isn't just tax credits. Like a pp I got hit with a housing benefit 'overpayment' that was impossible to work out, shouldn't have happened (not my fault they miscalculated and, when they sent you eleventy billion sheets every month, with about four sheets per week with their 'calculations' on it, unless you have a post grad in advanced computer maths you can't make head nor tail of it) because I'd kept them updated and that they encouraged me to take a payday loan to clear.

Even the people at the other end couldn't work out where this supposed 'overpayment' was. But I still had to pay it. I stopped claiming HB, because I was only entitled to about £12 a month, but they'd pay me that, then claim back £1000 for never-specified reasons. I figured I was better off just not claiming than claiming and then having to find some nebulous figure plucked from the sky to pay them back!

It's "unfair" but the entire tax system is unfair. If you make a mistake, it costs you. If they make a mistake, it still costs you.

The system in general works on the basis that it is the recipient's duty to ensure that their payments are correct and that they report any differences immediately. No, it's not fair, but it's the way they run things.

I should add, even if you report it and they tell you it's fine, it's your responsibility to put the money to one side so that you can pay it back when they finally realise their mistake.

Like I say, not fair.

The fuckers overpaid us by £6500!!!!!!!!!

They're getting it back at £55 a month for all eternity cos that's all I can bloody afford!

Bastards!!

I feel your pain OP, I deliberately told them we earnt around £2000 more than we did this year so they wouldn't overpay me.

Got a letter saying I owe them £157 odd even though we definitely earnt less than I told them and they have the right figures etc

called them and was told I don't owe them anything and where have I got my information, errrrm a letter from you!!!!

anyway they have now told me that actually maybe they owe me £396 but they cant confirm that until the end of july (even though they know our earnings from last year)

we are no longer claiming and now use the tax free childcare thing instead - have you looked into that OP?

But that's the point Chelle, the amount they ask you to pay back is some wafty 'pulled out of the air' figure. So how are you supposed to work out how much money to put aside, when they are going to ask for more than they paid you in the first place (because they've 'backdated' it for some random amount of time)?

if you haven't op, take a look at this

www.childcarechoices.gov.uk/

with tax free childcare the government put in £2 for every £8 you do, up to £2000 a year.

AND!!! we were also "overpaid" HB despite DH being out of work and me being on Mat Leave (earning 50% of my normal wage!!!). Didn't contact us for years then slapped me with a CCJ for not paying them back what they decided we owed them (even though we didn't know we'd been overpaid till the court summons came in the post 5 years after we claimed).... You'd need to be fucking Einstein to work out their calculations!!

Stupid fucking system x1million

They are horrendous we had help from CAB to fill the form in, so there was no chance of anything doing wrong, so I know it was filled in properly and they had me and my husband living at different address and him down as not working. I cancelled it and my husband has still had a letter about renewing even though he was never claiming I was.

Oh don't get me started....We also owe them money because they overpaid us. And yes, we've always sent in documentation of wages are so they have proof of earnings.
In what other job can you balls up so spectacularly time and time again and expect to reclaim the money that's been overpaid because it's your fault?!

Same here too. I went back to work, contacted them a month before I started my job. Payment rightly stopped. A year later we were clobbered by a £1600 overpayment bill. All enquiries with them and endless Internet searches, conversations on forums etc, made us sure it was futile to appeal this.

If you read the guidence that tc come out with they distegard the first £2,500 of increase that you tell them about and it is a 41% withdrawal rate so everybody that reports an increase they do not use that figure and they deliberately over pay you by £1,475 each year.

Eg i have an increase from £11k in 17/18 to £19k this year, 18/19 from the renewal in april they are paying me as if my income this year is going to be £11k, when they ask me for my estimate in august time i say £19k but they will deliberately make the calculations on £16.5k and reduce my tc from september, then they get the actual figures in april 19 and recalculate how to pay and through no fault of my own i have been overpaid by a minimum of £1,475 (and if i earn even more due to promotion overtime or bonus then its even more).

So yes we do report the correct figures but they don’t use them - by design, and for most people who have increases every year this happens year on year.

Unfortunately i cannot not claim tc as my rent and childcare is more than my wages so as a single parent i would be going into debt by 500 a month to simply go to work.

The only way to reduce any overpayment is to overreport on your mid year estimate but that would only minimise it as you would still have been over paid between april and september

I feel your pain!
Over the past 3 weeks I've had 5 letters from them, all with different amounts I owe and different amounts they say they'll pay me. I have no idea what is going on! I tried to sort it out over the phone but the woman had less idea about how to do a renewal than I did. 😤
The latest letter, from today, still has the incorrect amount of income for us and has said that as it's under appeal then they'll pay me more while I wait to see how much they have overpaid for last year. I mean, what? They know I owe them money but are going to pay me more while they decide what I owe????
It was a lifesaver last year though and thankfully we're not in the same financial problem so still worth pursuing for us. 🤗

It used to be (going back 20 years so forgive me if it’s a bit out of date) that if you were overpaid any benefit by an ‘official error’ i.e. you were on JSA, got a new job, told them and provided evidence and signed off but they still continued to pay you, they could ask for it back but couldn’t force it as it’s their fault. They may have tightened the rules though.

They were as bad when one of my dads staff went on mat leave. They overpaid him (so they said) so he put the amount aside and waited. He received letters from offices in Newcastle, Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle again all with differing amounts/dates. He spent a lot of time on the phone asking them to send him a correct, final calculation. No one did. He spoke to his accountant, even she told him they were hopeless but to keep the money aside. The child this relates to has just left primary school.

HMRC are useless generally. ExH was on the wrong tax code without realising for ages, he was then informed at the end of tax year he hadn’t paid enough tax and had to be put on a higher band to repay it. Majorly lost out. They’ve always been incompetent.

My kids are grown but I can't begin to tell you the pain we had with the hmrc over DHs tax, it just kept going on for years. Eventually I got on top if it, paid 2k we owed and started afresh. He has to do a self assessment each year now and I over estimate his income for the next financial year so that he overpays tax based on the unfathomable tax codes they give him. At the end of each tax year he usually gets a small refund.

We shouldn't have to overpay them for a year though should we? Just so we don't get into debt because they can't sort their shit out.

They pick on people who are easy targets and who are working their backsides off to support themselves and no longer need TCs.

They don't "pick on people". The regulations are that unless your income goes up by less than a certain amount (can't recall the figure now) over the original estimate, any overpayment will be adjusted in the following tax year, not the current one. It makes it far less costly to administer.

The alternative is the system used in Universal Credit, where the amount you get is adjusted based on actual earnings in the previous month. But people complain about that too: a bonus or a lot of overtime this month means less or no UC in the subsequent month, and people who are weekly paid often get nothing in a month with 5 pay days in it.

The real problem is that people in work don't earn enough to live on and have to have their wages topped up with benefits. If we had truly affordable housing and a real living wage, there'd be no need for supporting people on low incomes.

Tc are a nightmare.

They told me even though NOTHING had changed I owed them £1000. Rang them to be told "you don't owe anything ingore the letter" some weeks later I get a letter saying I hadn't contacted them about the overpayment so they were taking it further

Rang them AGAIN to be on hold for 3 years while they looked into my file. Overpayment was from years ago with an ex did I want to pay it all or just the half I HAD to pay

I always overestimate my tc but always end up with an Overpayment! How?!