Working Tax Credits this time....

[flamesparrow]

Me with the questions!!!

I don't understand what you have to be earning below to qualify! I've looked on the various websites and they list all the criteria for how many hours you work etc, but not the earnings cut off point... any ideas?

If no-one knows, if you fancy sharing your annual income, and if you get wtc, that'd help us all work it out

Is it not £26k household total income? maybe wrong though.

Your joint annual income has to be below £15,000 to qualify for Working Tax Credits.

The woman on the phone told me that when I phoned up for our renewal this year. We were still paying back some WTC from 2 years ago I think it was because they'd overpaid us!

Hmmm.... just checked... definately over £15000 as ours was over that... not sure how much though!

Anyone else able to shed light?

Ours is 27k and we DONT get it

Yeah dp wages goes up next month and we will be still entitled to some child tax credit but not working tax credit, which means we will have to pay for our prescriptions too!

Only to £15k?? Man, that is next to nothing for a family in some regions of the country. Hell, the average rent for a two-bed flat in this town is £500/month. Not including council tax.

you can get CTC up to total household income of £50k (I think). I'm not entitled to WFTC but I don't know what the limit is, certainly under 25k as I've always (since claiming) earned over that and never been entitled to WFTC

Hi FS. You coul put some theoretical figures into the on-line calculator and see at what point it tells you you'd be entitled to WFTC.

If your joint income is below 58k you're entitled to them.

Oooh - I like th theoretic figures idea!

Off to try that!

Down for maintenance til tomorrow evening!!!!

have you seen this website

I think it says up to £25,000 to claim WFTC

Ctc up to £50k but pittence

Wtc up to £14k

Double checked with my sister who workes for these arses.

Really I thought tax credit was meant to help working families

It is shite.

Both dh and I have to work full time to pay the bills, we have 3 sons under 4 and get no wtc, ctc is only £51 per week and we earn between us £25k per annum, so not that much when you think about it.

God these people really piss me off I go off my head, they should try living on our salaries and the pittence they pay us working families

Jambo
Now imagine how much your income would suffer if you made not £25,000/pa, but only a little over the £14,000/annum cutoff. And you had two kids. And you lived in say, London or Bristol.

I'm gonna have to phone em. I still can't get my head round it - Last year we were £14500 odd, but we are being paid WTC as well as CTC.

DH has just had a pay rise.

I'm gonna have to phone them to tell them now or we'll be in big poo next year when they tell us we owe them hundreds.

Why can't they just say "How much is your annual wage?", and "You must update us IMMEDIATELY if it changes" like all other benefits???

You'd be being paid what you need, when you need it, and it is your own fault then if you don't update them when things change and you owe money.

All this means I'll have to contact Housing AGAIN to let them know the new figures... I only got my paperwork for the last lot last week and updated them!!! AND - I'll have to pay back whatever they have overpaid us cos of the stupid tax credits system!!!

Well we earn less than £15000 and we get a tiny bit or WFTC. It's a really low wage but we get by, you just have to. If we were on £20,000 I'd feel loaded. It's all relative, people live up to their means whatever they earn.

expectaininscotland

Dh was only one working and earned 13500pa we got no wtc either this is why I had to go to work too.

Fell like I am missing out on so much of my childrens upbringing

i am single parent have one qualifying child she is 18 and still in f/t education. (ds nearly 20,so obviously doesnt count) i am being sponsored for full time education my income for year end 2004/2005 was 20,700- i was NOT elegible for any working family tax credit but was elegible for child tax credit of £41 a month.

hth x

Flame
What gets me is that they're the f*ing Inland Revenue - they should have access to what it is we make each year! As it is, I take my P60 and copy down the figure exactly from there on the annual review form.

I'm not going to be able to stay in my job after this baby comes. It's just too expensive to support 4 people on that sum in this town (Edinburgh). We're going to spend my maternity leave looking to leave here for a place where the cost of living is cheaper. I have to stay in my job for 3 months after the leave, but after that it's really time to move on.

It's too bad, b/c my husband's family has always been here. But it's too hard for families to get by here.

Jambo I am very surprised by that - it sounds like a mistake. Our annual income is about 11.5K per annum (we don't live anywhere that cheap - our mortgage is £100 less than DHs income so WTC is our lifeline) and we get about £133 a week (WTC & CTC).

Expat - I echo that - why do the inland revenue not know how much you are earning??? Hello they take the tax every month!!? Its really strange.

Also, we are paying back a 2k overpayment because of their stupid system. We informed them that I had stopped working and my husband gone f/t (so income raised by about 3 or 4 grand) and no lie, it took them about a year to adjust it (after numerous lengthy phone calls & receiving 4 letters a day for about 4 months). They are absolutely sh*te

We have 3 kids so I don't know if that makes a huge difference payout wise??

I kept a copy of my annual review form - do every year - with the exact figure off the P60 (also in my possession) in case they came back and said they'd overpaid me, which of course they did. No change in circumstance which I failed to inform them off. I've been the only one working since I initially filed a claim and my annual income has risen exactly £700/pa in the past 3 years.

I then appealed and got my MP involved. It's the only way, starry. I reported my income truthfully directly off a form the Inland Revenue also has in my possession. It is their job to determine what our award should be - they don't allow the claimant to do that.

My case is still ongoing but my MP is hopeful.

This whole system is the biggest lot of bollocks I've ever come across.

totally agrre system is shite.

Honestly that is what we get from tax credits anf they say this is right.

The reason I had asked IR about the income level for the WTC was because when I had phoned up one time I was told that we still owed them £535 that had been overpaid to us in WTC.

I phoned my renewal in this year because I'd been on maternity leave last year and when you do the renewal you can deduct the SMP that you were paid for the time you were off, which then lowered our annual income by over £2000, I asked about the WTC and was told that we still owed this £535 and that to receive it you have to earn less than £15,000. So because our income had been above that we'd been overpaid and now owed them this money.

Because of the SMP being deducted we had then been underpaid because that took us below the £15,000 threshold and got a lump sum paid into dh's account for the WTC that we should have received last year. Are you all still with me?

The woman on the phone actually said to me that I should have phoned them to tell them that my income would have been different but I didn't know that you had to deduct the SMP, I'd never heard of that before it's not something that gets mentioned.

I'm now thinking that come next year they will probably tell us that we've been overpaid now or something aarrgghh, does it never end? Oh and the most recent letter that we've received now says that we don't owe them anything for WTC but I'll bet that next year they will want back the lump sum that they paid us because now that I'm back at work my income has gone back up.