How do I end my tax credits claim?

[SecondhandTable]

Bit of a weird one. We've been on the tax credits system for the last few years.

I've got my letters through to renew and it says they've recalculated and we actually weren't entitled to any at all this past financial year, and we have an overpayment of a few hundred pounds. It says they will collect this from future payments however our circumstances are not going to change in the short term such that we would be entitled to it any more if we weren't in the last tax year.

I want to end my claim, pay the overpayment back in one lump sum, and then claim tax free childcare. I thought the easiest way to do this would be to log in the childcare account and claim tax free childcare but it looks like I can't do that until the reconfirmation period opens in June? We already get the 30 hours childcare.

Can anyone advise me how I can go about ending my tax credits claim, repaying the overpayment and beginning a tax free childcare claim instead? Who should I contact and how? Or do I need to wait until the reconfirmation period for childcare opens again next month?

Ring the number on the top of the letter - it's literally on the top of the page?

You have to cancel your claim before they finalise your entitlement for the next year in July or you can't do it until the following April.

To be honest our house is chaos at the moment so wasn't sure where the letters were but have just found one. I was hoping I could just do it online somehow though as I will really struggle to call them for various reasons as imagine I will be on hold a looooong time! But yes I can do if that's the only option. Thanks for the heads up about the timescales too.

They wouldn't let me do it online or on live chat, it had to be a phone call. The long waits were why I thought I'd wait until the renewal window was over but they said it has to be done before the automatic renewal on the 32st July. They did let me say I was withdrawing and note it on my file but it wasn't complete until the end of the tax year.

Sorry 31st!

I phoned them up, said due to change in circumstances Was stopping claim.
I had an overpayment of £400 which I paid over 3 instalments.
never heard another thing

Good luck to you. They are a bunch of totally useless, incompetent idiots in my experience.

They overpaid me due to their error. I told them to stop paying me because I was still paying back £5000.

I phoned and wrote to them and they still kept paying me.

It only stopped when I wrote and said that I would not pay back any more money as I would treat it as an admin charge for my time spent continuously having to contact them.

That is when it stopped.

Good luck. You will need it.

Good luck. They are arseholes. I’m sure that they will decide that you owe thousands as soon as you cancel.

Eek. They haven't actually made any payments to me since autumn 2021. So at least that base is covered! I will try and call them on Tuesday when my eldest is in nursery. Bracing myself!

I got through and sorted it, I 'only' was on hold for 25 minutes which was less than expected (albeit still a pita!). However they said I can't do anything about the overpayment and they won't even confirm the amount to me, they will send me a notice in the autumn with the overpayment amount and I can't pay it back before I have that. Wtf. You think they'd want me to pay it asap (I'm ready to pay it in a lump sum assuming it is only a few hundred).

That’s good you’ve got through. Hopefully it won’t be too much and yoU can pay it off in Oner