Child Tax Credit Confusion

[CindyCrawford2]

I recently renewed Child Tax Credits. However, my new award is far less than the online calculators predicted. I used two online calculators Gov.uk and Turn2us - they both predicted nearly double the payments that I have actually been awarded by Child Tax Credit Office. I have checked and double checked and I have given the same correct information about income, family etc every time to the Tax Credit Office and in both online calculators. When I queried this with the Child Tax Credit Office (after holding on for 15mins) a very unhelpful woman told me that that's what I had been awarded based on the circumstances/income I gave (exactly the same information as I inputted into the online calculators) and would not discuss it further. I am thinking of appealing the decision and quoting the figures from the calculators but just wondered how reliable are they and has anyone else experienced this?

Anyone, please?

The online calculators are notoriously unreliable. They won't increase your entitlement based on the figures obtained online

I Work in housing benefit and the calculators are crap they always over estimate entitlement unfortunately. My local authority tried to make our own but failed as they couldn’t get it to calculate properly.

Thank you both for taking the time to reply to me. After reading your replies it does not sound like the online calculators are very reliable - which surprises me as one of them was on HMRC's Gov UK site and you would think they could at least get it correct!!

Tax credits are based on earnings from the previous tax year. if your earnings are going to be significantly different this year then you can ask them to base it on an estimated amount.

Tax credits have a calculator on their site maybe give that a go?

I got a letter for housing benefit yesterday saying I owe them over £4000 as they've overpaid me £50 per week for around 2 years. They're now going to deduct every week until it's paid off. No idea how this has happened as I've always updated any change in circumstances so it's been reviewed quite a few times. It's also very different from the calculators.