yet ANOTHER IR question (and mild rant)

[nightowl]

ive just had my new calculation and my child tax credit is reduced a fair bit...enough to make life very difficult. ive checked the calc and technically its right, they have already paid x amount of child tax credit and they have divided the remainder up until april 05.

BUT...they shouldnt have paid me so much. when i got made redundant i told them THE SAME DAY and assumed they would stop paying my childcare costs (obviously). unfortunatly they carried on paying them and i didnt realise until i saw my back statement almost a month later. so i phoned them and told them again. but wouldnt you know it, they have only just sorted it out. (was made redundant at beginning of july) so because they screwed up YET AGAIN im going to be skint until next april. someone has told me if the mistake was theirs, then i can fill in a form to say why i dont think it should be taken out of my award...is this true and if so, what is the form called so i can get one?

this is what one gets for going back to work. ive been skint for 6 months because of all their stupid mistakes.

but if you knew you were being overpaid, why did you spend it? HArsh, but I put mine into a separate account until it was sorted out... they might not see it as their fault if you told them twice you had called to get it reduced... they might assume you would know it was not yours?

Hope that does sound hard -- not meant to...

Love how they bollock it all up everytime. STILL working on our appeal. STILL never received an official letter as to why they stopped our credits and/or the £1900 we 'owe' them b/c they never corrected their mistakes from 2003.

SIL was considering going back to work. She saw what happened to us - and to 4 of her friends - and decided to stay on the dole.

i honestly did not know they were still paying it...stupidly enough i assumed that they would do as they were supposed to..i havent time to keep checking up on them.

I understand, nightowl. We were sent TWENTY-EIGHT different award notices. ALL w/different amounts on them. I kept every one. How the hell were we supposed to know which was correct, especially as they seemed to differ by month w/no change to our circumstances?

I read an article in The Scotsman paper in which they set 2 qualified accountants to try to figure out a tax credit award correctly. Both failed to be able to do it!

So far, the tax credit fracas has put us £2000 in debt.

Sorry to hear that -- I guess I just assumed (wrongly as ever) that it wold be easy for you to spot it... sounds like you have had a tough time of it so I hope it all works out...

In my (very weak) defence, I work indirectly for the Inland Reevnue and I do see the other side loads of people working really hard trying their best to sort out the problems but they are working on systems so out of date, they are probably steam driven and not helped by constant changes in policy that are hard to implement not an excuse but I have just spent the last week sorting out problems caused by the users of IR systems... so probably not best placed or timed to comments!!

Oh, no, make that £3900 w/what they say we owe them.

whooo mancmum...you are a brave lady admitting who you work for . i understand about the systems, i know how hard it is to work on shitty equipment but i have to say, some of the things they came out with verged on ridiculous. at one point they were adamant that i had three children (i have two).

i have had about 15-20 award notices since i started work in march expat...i kept them all too but not one of them had the correct information on it! first i paid childcare for two kids (i didnt), then they lost the ofsted number, then i had three kids, then i had two, then i had three etc etc and they didnt pay me a penny in working tax credit all the time i was there (three months). in the end my head office took pity on me and paid it after i faxed her a copy of my award notice. same with childcare help, i paid childcare for must have been two months before they sent me the backpayments. this is why i got into debt, i dont like debt. i very rarely buy anything if i have to pay for it monthly unless i really need it (like when the washer broke) and i used to do a christmas catalogue but thats it...its infuriating when other peoples mistakes put you in a position like that!