apparently I get £160 working / child tax credits A WEEK!! can this be right?

[Meglet]

Ok, as a rough guide I am contracted to 20 hours per week (currently on maternity leave), £6,500 per year. Lone parent plus baby & toddler. According to the tax credits people I am entitled to £160 per week .

I have double checked it with them and they say I it's correct. I daren't spend it in case it's wrong and they ask for it back.

have anyone else recieved a lot of tax credits and no problems or having to pay it back?

You'll be getting a working tax credit element as well I should think and a contribution to your childcare costs.

I would go on entitledto.com and put your info in there see what they say.

When on ML they ignore your SMP so your salary would only be £4k

Blimmin' eck! We get £27.88 a MONTH! (mind you I work full time, DS is self-employed and we only have DS whose child care costs us the grand sum of £6.25 a week)

Not sure what to say - if you ask they put it in writing that this is what you're definitely entitled to would you have any comeback if they changed their minds?

We get maximum CTC & WFTC and it is a lot.

cargirl good idea about 'entitled to'. I'll see what they say...

It sounds right. We get £80 pw for 2 children over 1, with an annual salary of £19000.

You get a higher rate for a baby in the first 12 months.

It would be tough trying to manage on the £6,500 without the tax credits? Surely you would have been at least getting the child tax credit since you had your first child?

We got a fair amount during the year dh was unemployed due to redundancy, coincided with dd's under one year. I was working, but obv. on mat leave. It sounds perfectly feasible that you'd get that tbh.

I get a LOT of CTC, due to having 4 kids and 2 with disabilities. I questioned it when I started getting it buts right

That's a bit more twice what I get and my salary is roughly a third more than yours (ft work) so I'd say it was about right.

Mind I've been overpaid on tc in the past so at some point they're going to claw it back .

i work 20 hours per week and am a lone parent, my son is 3.5 and in nursery 3 days per week. i get £167.85 a week

Thats strange, my friend has three kids, she only earns £2000 per year and gets £156 per week, thats not as much as the op is it??

Yes, that sounds about right if you are using an Ofsted-registered childcare provider.

blossomsmine if she works very few hours the tax credits are less.

If I remember right the optimum amount of hours to work so that you get maximum CTC is between 16 and 20

Yes I get around that, but it includes money for childcare too. I work 17 hours (soon to be 13 so I will lose all the TC's)

When I was single mum of two I worked 16hrs and got roughly the same salary as you and I paid out £103 childcare a month. The tax credits I got were about £700 a month, so yes sounds about right.

Oh i see, thanks lou for letting me know about the hours etc.,

muggglewump, have you thought about becoming self employed for 5 hours per week, is there anything you can do to top your hours up.

When I went back to work I found an ideal job, but it was only 14.5 hours. I became self employed for the other 2.5 to top my hours up so that I could get tax credits. It's not illegal, and I was advised to do it by the job centre. It's a bit of a pain as you have to register with the tax man and do tax returns and all that malarky, but tbh doing that amount of hours you don't pay any extra. It's worth thinking about

edit - 3 hours per week

I got both having filled in the forms, they assessed. I queried. They said no its correct. Two years later (I'd always kept them advised of earnings, childcare costs) they asked for £6,000 back! They said I must have known I was getting too much (how?). I now get nothing as it is being used to pay back the overpayment. Wish I'd never applied in the first place tbh.

Yep, same thing happened with me as MollieO. I receieved 2 yrs of tax credits, told them everything that changed as life went along, I queried amount as I thought it was too high , they repeatedly said 'no its correct'. Now they are clawing back 4000! They admitted their mistake - they recorded the changes in my earnings as I told them, but didn't 'activate' them - this happened FIVE times!! And even though I appealed it they say "it's the public's money and you werent entitled to that much, yes we made a mistake, sorry, but your still going to have to pay it back!' Its v tricky to work out what you should be getting, from my experience its best to see someone from Citizens Advice Bureau to check, a drag I know, but you will probably end up there if tax credits overpay you.

I'm a lone parent
If I was to start working 24 hours per week
What WTC's would I be entitled to?
Iv tried th gov.uk calculator but it tells me to declare it
I'm just seeing if it's worth taking a job or not to end up skinter than a 16 hrs contract ....

Sounds about right to me. I get more with 2 dc but both get DLA so that means they get premiums. I've been claiming tax credits for 7 years and not had any issues with overpayments.

I'll work it out for you, leanna, if you like. I'd need to know the wages you'd earn for those hours, the number and rough ages of children, and any rent you pay.