Overpayment WFTC will this nightmare ever end?

[LoveMyGirls]

apparently we got overpaid 2 years ago and ever since then we have not recieved a penny, now i dont want to seem ungrateful but it has caused me worry and stress and i've just had my 2nd baby they told me on the phone i would recieve more after dd was born but apparently because i still owe them money i get nothing still , i couldnt get through on the phone and had to go into the tax office in town now the lady says i will have to go in with my paperwork and she will write to them while im there to ask them to review my situation. has anyone else done this and how can i get them to wipe the slate clean so to speak. every letter we get tells me we owe them different ammounts last time i rang and spoke to soemone she told me we owed £400 (from £1600) then when i went in to see someone they told me we still owed £1200 you can imagine how upset i was - will this nightmare ever end

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We had a letter a couple of months ago saying they had over paid us £1000 plus
That our payments would stop and we would need to pay it all back. This is there mistake as my Dh went into the Tax office and filled all the forms in with them with the correct info.
Anyway I was really upset called them to see what was going on they said your payments will continue until July 2006 then they will take a small amount a week until debt is cleared.
Every time I call them they never seem to know what they are doing, so next year we will owe even more. It's like a loan we never asked for really

yesterday we had a 'bank credit' that we weren't expecting, and after phoning our bank were told it was tax credits (it usually says this on the statement, but doesn't this time). we phoned the tax credits people to be told it's the time of year Inland Revenue update their system and a change in our circumstances means we get another random payment today and from january our monthly payment goes down by £100, but that it still works out at the same amount over the year.

having spoken to our accountant (who happens to be FIL) he assures us there is NO CHANGE in our circumstances, our earnings etc are exactly the same.

its annoying because now i have to be even more frugal as we were just managing with the payments the way they were.

Horrible horrible horrible. Thats what I think of Tax Credits, they have basically ruined our lives and caused us so much debt.
They took a year to start paying us, then paid us thousands too much, subsequent years have reduced our payments, but still keep overpaying us, so every year our debt with them goes up and up. We recieve incomprehensible letters stating we owe dif amounts every couple of weeks. I've given up trying to work it out.
I'd love to be in a position to not have to claim it at all, it's supposed to help families out but just causes problems and stress.
When they were fobbing us off for the whole year until they commenced payments, we actually went to our MP and it got sorted pretty quick once he was involved. Also, I'm sure they can only take something like 20percent of your payments each week to pay back any overpayments, I'm not sure how I found that out, I'll see if I can find a link to it.

It is a colossal f* up this system.
Take your paperwork in sit down with someone until it gets sorted. Refuse to leave until its sorted.
I know in some cases they can reduce the amount you pay back so you do not have to go totally without, but depends very much on situation.

My friend got told that she had been overpaid, and as of April she won't be entitled to anything because of having to pay piles back... but they were going to keep giving her an amouont each month so she wasn't left without! WTF is that all about??? You owe us money, so we'll take it all off you, and then lend you some more to pay back next year...

Everytime I think I grasp how this insane system works, I lose it again. I was talking to a benefits woman yesterday, and she was saying how the payments have been steadily dropping since it started (I hadn't noticed, where it is only by £10 or so a month, it doesn't seem much, but over a year and across everyone.... it works out some hefty sums!!!), and that she had encouraged people to go back to work because tax credits were meant to make life so much better, and she feels like she tricked people and made their lives harder

no advice really except keep pestering them
go to mp

tc said we were overpaid by £600 and had to repay it all back
by time we finished we paid back £1200
even though I explained they took double back, we have never had a refund
they will not listen to me on the phone

We've been overpaid nearly £2500 and after loads of phone calls they still keep it coming.....

terrifying......

The people on the phone, seem to just fob you off, tell you any old rubbish to get you off the phone, so definately make a note of time/date/name of person you spoke to and what they said, I so so wish I had kept a record of all the nonsense I was told over the phone.

maybe I should contact my MP?

jingleshells dh kept a record like you describe
did nothing

It depends on how much tax credits you get if they can take it all back towards the overpayment or can only reduce the payments. But unless your income is really quite high if you haven't had a payment for 2 years you should have paid back more than £400 especially if you've just had a baby as for the first year the entitlement would have been higher. To be honest it's been my experience that the people on the phone actually know more than the tax office as they will deal with tax credits all day where as the offices deal with everything. One thing to do would still go to the office but rather than getting them to wite to the tax credit office get them to phone for you, they have direct lines to the call centres, and ask exactly where you stand at the moment and why you were overpaid in the first place and make sure that both the offier and the person on the phone agree, at least then you have more than one persons opinion on it. If it wasn't your fault that they overpaid you, if you told them the information and you could have resonably believed that the payments you were getting were correct not just that your income went up throughout the year and you never told thm till the review, you can dispute it.

its all such a mess i feel overwhelmed by it i will take my paperwork, every wftc letter/ award i have ever had plus mine and dp's p60's from this year and go and try to get it sorted only thing is i never understand what they tell me as it seems they change the system every time i try n make sense of it. i really really hate it and wish they had left us alone in the first place! grrrrrr

I don't anyone on WFTC that hasn't had theirs messed up I got overpaid by about £1200 (so they say) and they have stopped my ayments indefinatley. At one point they had me down as earning about £25000 with a company car (I cant drive) and loads of other benefits I don't know where they got this from I was a part time waitress on less than minimum wage!!!!
My friend got hers stopped and she rang them and told them it was their mistake and they wrote off what she owed and continued paying her.

It's one big joke I don't understand how they can get everyones so wrong so often

we've been overpaid so much as they said my dh works 38 hours a week, eg. full time and earns nil.

Eh?

LMG - take your P60s for the past few years, so that they can go right back to the start with it all.

I call them every time we get even the teeniest pay change, and I'm hoping that it will all be straight in April, but I'm not holding my breath!!! The last time I phoned to update the guy said to me "It doesn't raise you above your upper limit, and since we're less than 6 months from the next update, there isn't any point in changing it" - he had me squawking "There is a point in changing it - because I want to know that you have been updated so you don't tell me I owe you money come April!!!"... he went very quiet and said "Ok Mrs Flame", and did what I'd asked.

doesnt matter how much i ring and tell them things have changed they get it wrong everytime even though i know i rang and changed it!

Get onto your MP NOW. Also contact the adjudicator's office AND fill out an official complaint form. See a welfare rights adviser and get them involved, too.

They made a MESS out of our lives! We're £3000 in debt b/c of their repeated cock ups. Luckily, I didn't do business w/them by phone - all by Recorded or Special Delivery post, and I saved every single scrap of paper they ever sent us. So I had a case file inches thick to send to the MP.

Basically, they had my husband a) on Job Seeker's Allowance when he never has been in his life b) qualifying for disability element on his WTC when he was a SAHD at the time of application and therefore had NO employer. I applied for WTC and he for CTC b/c he was staying at home to look after DD.

We had to appeal. It took about 6 months before they wiped the slate clean.

By that time, we'd experienced EXTREME hardship b/c they cut us off when I was only earning about £13,000 gross/annum and supporting 3 people in the 3rd most expensive city in Britain. We had to borrow money, DH had to get a part-time job in the evenings/weekends b/c we could not afford outside childcare for DD, and I am pregnant.

I'm sorry to say, I want to spit every time I see Gordon Brown on telly. He's nothing but a robber baron to me and always will be.

They are a pain in the arse. I've just been told they've overpaid us by £3000 and they had DH down as gettinf jobseekers allowance - he wasn't.
Nightmare.

Aragon
Same here. I wound up photocopying ALL our bank statements from the time we started receiving any tax credits to prove we NEVER got JSA. It took me forever. That inflated our income by some £2800/annum.

i've been going through my bank statements and awards and they make no sense really on one award they said we owed £88 then they sent us a new award 2 days later saying we owed £2000!!!! this cannot be right somewhere they have gone massivly wrong i am going to add up how much i have recieved in total and then i am going to the tax office to sort it out i hope to god they sort this out and hopefully i will end up receiving some money! what a mess

Keep everything they send you. To send to your MP. Just to hammer home how completely ridiculous it all is. I mean, how the hell is one supposed to know what is the correct award? University Challenge tried it and failed. The Scotsman hired accountants from Deloitte & Touch to try it, and they failed.

We were overpaid, only CTC, thankfully, we also informed them as soon as we knew dp was getting a cash bonus from work due to them being bought out.
But they kept paying.
So then they stopped all the payments. Due to start again in Feb 06
DD started getting DLA - that changes entitlement so I am told
I have spoken to 7 different people on the helpline, all have given different amounts, varying from
less money less than nothing???
nil - logical at this stage one could think
To a stonking £360 per month extra on CTC
We do not get WFTC as dp earns above the limit, which is understandable.
This baffles him, me and everyone
If I'd had been a single parent still, this would have finished me off. I'd have lost my house and everything.
It's a disgrace

if i dont get any sense out of them on friday then i will have to photocopy it all with a letter to my MP!
should i also send my income and outgoings?

so fed up, when you've just had a baby the last thing you want is to have to deal with this but then who needs it anytime really!!

The Inland Revenue has a guide on how to deal with tax credits. This guide states that, if there is an overpayment of tax credits as the result of an error on the part of the IR, then they should not seek to recover it.

Can I ask anyone who is suffering because the IR is trying to claw back overpayments made as a result of their error to please go to your local CAB and raise the issue there? CAB has a process called social policy issues. If enough people complain about something, CAB can very often bring pressure to bear to get things changed. They are currently seeking more cases regarding overpayments of tax credits and (a) may be able to help your individual case and (b) can use your case to bring about change nationally.