Tax credits system so complex that it is abused by fraudsters, misunderstood by claimants and mismanaged by officials

[onceinalifetime]

Apparently. How can they pay £1.5bn of tax credits out in error and I'm still not entitled to anything? Colleague of mine on similar salary/situation but only one child, not two, has just had hers bumped from £100 per week to £250 per week for no apparent reason! I don't get it.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7505860.stm

Fio - Different companies built NTC and NIRS2. EDS built the NTC system and Accenture built NIRS2.

This might be a naive questions, but if you know that your TC's are based on your previous years earnings, then surely it makes sense to let HMRC know how much you actually earn...then they could adjust what they give you? or am I missing a vital piece of the process? (its very possible!)

Cat64 - so how do you give extra money to those people who earn so little they pay little or no tax anyway ? Additional tax allowances don't do that. The reason for doing away with the married couples allowance is that this gave additional tax relief to everyone regardless of their earnings. Labour clearly want to target that money at those people in society that needed it most. So take all the £10 off those high earners and give it to the poorest members of society.

Sounds ok to me - spoken as someone who doesn't receive TC's, but would have had MCA.

Oh, yes and for the record it was the Tories that started to erode the value of the MCA by giving it at 20% instead of the rate you paid tax at. that was a very resource intensive for the ex IR and caused many over and underpayment sof tax, so labour abolished it.

Can I just say that whenever I have contacted HMRC in my professional capacity, the staff have been nothing but helpful and usually fix the problem there and then. I work for JCP BTW.

NIRS2 - Aaaaaarrrgh!!!!