Tax credits just dropped by £200 a month no warning

[93sdb]

Help! I checked this morning and its gone from 64 to 21 a week. I've got no notice at all. No one is answering from HMRC its now May I thought if anything was to happen it would of been in April.

I work 30 hours a week which covers mortgage/ clothes and car but this pays for me and my son to eat and they've taken it out of nowhere. No ones answering. Im panicking and don't know what to do! Life is extra stressful at the moment and this is just pushing me over the edge. :( what could of happened?

Last year there was a £20 per week Covid allowance which has stopped. The other £20 per week it will be a normal adjustment for this time of year. They tend to go down and then go up again when you have completed the renewal.

They already dropped the 20 in April, now they've dropped another 40 :(

Have you had your P60 from your employer? Could they be clawing back a 2020/21 underpayment?

Has your employer said you’ve earned more last year than you think you have?

It could be an overpayment that's now been adjusted. Tax credits are rubbish for this.

Mine have now been stopped until they process my renewal (which they haven't issued yet). Mine will be due to a discrepancy between my p60 info which they'll have from my employer and my reported income which deducts pension contributions. Again, no information, I just picked it up from the app and know this is what happens from previous years.

Has your p60 income increased, or do you deduct pension or gift aid contributions?

Have you had your renewal pack through yet?

Mine has gone down by £70 a month )-:

I used to claim and then they said I owed them about £4000
They'd calculated it wrong and I had to pay it all back

I came to the conclusion it isn't worth the hassle

I just upped my hours

@omgthepain

I used to claim and then they said I owed them about £4000 They'd calculated it wrong and I had to pay it all back

I came to the conclusion it isn't worth the hassle

I just upped my hours

We had exactly the same. It wasn’t worth the stress, I just do lots of overtime instead.

Are you paying into a pension that isn't shown on your P60? Mine isn't so every year it's a stressful process and takes months to rectify. However in that time my tax credits have been significantly reduced by around £200 a month and its extremely tough.
It sounds like that are taking back an overpayment so check your earnings against what your award was based on.
I agree tax credits are such a hassle but they are also a life line for me and my son and make the difference between us being able to eat or not.

What did your original award notice say? Usually it will give the dates of any changes.

We will pay £££ from X until Y

Then we will pay you £££ from Y until Z (or onwards)

For those who have experience of your P60 figure being different to the actual income figure due to pension contributions - how do you report the pension contribution in the renewal? I've got mine through and I need to adjust the income figure they have to take account of an extra pension contribution, but it doesn't give me the option to detail my deductions, just to enter a different income figure to what they have. If I alter it, surely they'll just come back and say that's not what's on my P60? How do I inform them it's due to pension contributions?

You can't unfortunately you just reduce the income which I feel is odd. I wait ages and end up speaking to someone and telling them then (have tried calling sooner im always asked to wait til I hear from them).