think tax credits have been overpaid

[k9kuts]

about 3 weeks ago i made our first claim for tax cedits,after not hearing anything for a while i gave them a call to check it had been received,the lady was very nice and congratulated me as my claim had been accepted and then began to reel off all these different amounts of money,to be honest i didnt really understand what she was on about but anyway she assured me that a sum of x amount of pounds would be paid in on the 15th.so i rang the bank yesterday to check and they have paid in over double what she told me!the annoying thing is i have not received any award notices so i dont know were i stand.of course this had to happen on a weekend,when their shut !has this ever happened to anyone else and will i have to pay it back?

here and here are some threads that might be helpful x

thanks emilyo5 i think its best if i just leave it untouched,although iam finding it very hard to resist going to toys r us and spoling dd rotten!the most annoying thing is that i havent received any awartd notices so i dont even know how much they have cocked it up by!

I think that you should look at half the money as yours and put the other half somewhere you cant touch it until you get your awards notice.

Come back here if you dont understand your awards notice by the way because you need a degree in how to understand them!

We were overpaid by £2,500 and I left it in my account so we could repay asap. Problem was, Tax Credits said to keep it and they would take back the overpayment in instalments and deduct it from our future payments.

This is what they are likely to do to you, but tbh I wish I had insisted on repaying the amoun in full and receiving the proper amount each month. I found I struggled as we were receiving a lesser amount than we had budgeted for iyswim.

Incidentally, a friend of a friend was overpaid by about £3,000 and she spent the lot, thinking they wouldn't notice but then she found she was in an even worse situation as she got hardly anything each month after the overpayment had been taken off her monthly payments!!!

QE - we have the exact same sum of money and situation as you. really annoying isnt it. we are recieving no payments now! But we have the £2500 in a high interest account.

tax credit call centre is open 7 days per week

if there has been a delay in paying you soemtimes you get 2 payments at once. when i used to get tax credits this happened with our first payment as it was backdated to the date we claimed from.

i rang and asked them to confirm that this was the case and they did. i got the award notice three weeks after getting my first payment!