tax credits pls help very confused!!!

[lilsmum]

my dd was born in jan... i was down as working 21 hrs a week and my dp full time hrs... they awarded me 20 a wk... then they changed it to 40 a wk... and when i rang them up to say i wasnt going back to work in the near future they put it down to 16 a wk!!! everytime i phone up they never seem to know what they are talking about... also before april when it went off the year 2001-2002 i was working full time and on a good wage they had me and dp on 30000 a yr and now we are only on 19000 a yr yet they have put it right down... they did say if our income went down tax credits would go up but it hasnt!!! they also said if i returned to work before next april i would have to pay some money back... yet we simply cant manage now as they have cut the payment in half... i really dont know what to do... i want to stay home with dd but we cant afford me to... does this all make sense??? i think the tax credits is aload of crap especially when it is supposed to be to help working parents/parent out!! and yet if you are on income support you get tax credits as well and more than if you are working!!!! does anyone know if what we are getting is correct and why they have put the tax credits down !!! pls help xx

I'm afraid I can't help but I can sympathise 100%. The IR overpaid me last year so aren't paying me this year, leaving me £100 a month worse off. Which is a quarter of my crappy part time salary. Which means I'm probably going to have to change jobs and work more hours.

To make things worse, THEY phoned ME in June to tell me that they hadn't paid me the childcare element last year, and that I should supply them with details of what I'd paid in nursery fees and they'd adjust the payments. They said I'd get a cheque for at least a grand in backpayments. Cheque didn't arrive so I phoned the helpline for advice, and they told me that our combined income was too high to qualify for the childcare element so there wouldn't be any backpayments. The notes they sent out with the original claim form say you can claim childcare if you're earning up to £55k jointly, which we are nowhere near, and when I mentioned this they didn't know what I was talking about.

Basically, the IR are a bunch of tossers who can't even operate their own tax rules. I'm not bothering to apply for tax credits next year as the whole system is so screwed up. Because of their incompetence I have to work longer hours and see less of my children, so that's how bloody helpful they are to working families.

Blimey, I've got myself all upset again now - was having such a serene day until then!

Hi, you can do the forms online if you have your p60 its not THAT hard, you dont need to submit the form, but it will give you and estimate of what your entitled too...maybe see if its anywhere near the figures they had thrown at you?
Agree about the different phone call different story, which is why I did it online. I could see I was putting the right info in at least.

Another sympathiser here - dh works full time and I work part time. Last year they awarded me £130 a week!!!! which obviously was wrong so I rang and told them. They agreed and adjusted it to £545 a year but as they had sent me £600 in cheques before the award I could keep this as my yearly amount and they would amend the records for the next year. Then 3 more cheques for £130 came so I rang them again and they told me just to destroy them and not bank them - so I kept them. This year they start paying me £10.45 a week and then after a few weeks these stop. So I rang them again and they can't pay me because I haven't filled in a new assessment which they haven;t sent me but its okay because they can just take mine and dh's salaries over the phone and then make an award, I said I've still got the overpayment cheques and they ask me to return them and they will send me a replacement cheque. Nothing happens. So I call them again and they say "we've already got your salaries and you should have been issued with a cheque to cover the ones you returned" Well I haven't. So now they're going to readjust all our payments and send me a cheque in 4 weeks!!!

bad hair, i totally agrre with everything you have said!!! the thing i cant get my head round is my auntie said she was getting it even though her son is 22 and doesnt live with them and their daughter is 17 and works full time.. they told tc that my uncle was working full time and my auntie works part time and they were getting £72 a wk!!!! work that one out !!! lol it is a complete shambles.... maybe the reason the payments are so crap is because they waste thousands of pounds every year on wasted paper sending out the same letters and booklets over and over again, i sorted out all my paper work/bills and found 18 of the same booklets !!!! lol

The last time we applied we received 4 different figures in the same week - each with the exact same booklet. One figure was very obviously wrong. When I queried it I was told that the person processing our form hadn't scrolled down the screen and so had worked out our figure based on one child only!

I've realised that the telephone hinder line is pointless. What you are told on the phone and what you actually get are two entirely different things. I now send letters instead and so far seem to have more luck this way. I would try out the online calculator.

Be warned though. Even when they finally get their act together and work out the amount you are owed, as soon as your dd has her 1st birthday the payments will be reduced yet again.

OOHHH I am going to rant I have had sooo much trouble with blooming tax credits.

For some reason their stupid system picked up my dh wage as £0, so they awared us £3000 working tax and £6000 child tax credit that was paid to his employer to put into dh wage. They didnt tell us about these amounts being paid so imagine our shock when they sent us a letter stating that they had over paid us by £9000 and wanted it back!! Since then we have had so many packs and letters from them. It is so confusing.

All that I can say is each operator seems to have varied training. So you can ring up and speak to one person who gives you bits of info, if you call again and speak to somebody else they will give you more or different info!!! So if you are unsure that what you are getting is correct ring and speak to somebody else!!

I would also say DONT trust what they are giving you is correct - because it might not be.

Yep. Last month an extra £200+ appeared in my account from the IR. It would make a big difference to us but I daren't touch it in case it's a mistake.

If I had a pound for each time they wrote to me with a different figure I would be a rich women!

When i received my annual review pack, i phoned up with all my figures and estimates and a few days later I recieved my award notices for this year. They paid me extra for last year as i my wage was far lower due to maternity leave etc. i thought wow this is very efficient, then it all went downhill. i received more notices where for whatever reason they doubled my income, hence i owed them money back. i phoned them and each time they said they had sorted it out, each time they lied! finally I got through to someone who knew about this prob, it was a technical error and sent my case to research and dev to sort out, this is still ongoing. Aolong with this prob, they also gave us working tax credit, which we are ineligible for! I phoned to tell them to stop it, they said we realise this is a mistake and will take the money back later. I said why don't you just not make the payments in the first place and they told me they could not stop them!!!!! What use are they I ask?
I have also had to fill out forms recently to say why I don't think I should repay all this money back!
One guy even told me to just ignore these award notices!!!!!!!!!!!!
The IR are a joke, the system is a joke and we are all not bloody laughing.

Iilsmum - no doubt you have probably received a letter about repayments, call the number on the letter and speak to someone there, they seem a bit more with it. Might also be worth paying CAB a visit.

Good luck to us all

Same hear too.
In July Dp got a new job and his wages went up slightly. I read through my tax credit book and it said that if our income hadn't gone above the amounted stated on my award then i didn't need to inform them, which i took to mean that our payments wouldn't change.

I had to ring them anyway about my address and so gave them dp's new work details. A few days later i got a new award telling me that my money had gone down a couple of quid a week.
I rang them again to ask why, and they said because your income has gone up. I said yeah but it says in your handbook that if it hasn't gone above xxxx then we don't need to tell you as our miney doesn't change.
They didn't have a clue what i was on about and just said that it was a good job i had informed them as otherwise i would have been over paid and owe them money.
I have since had to ring them several times because of probs with Dp's PAYE number. Everytime I ring them i get a new award notice and my money has always gone down by about 2 quid despite me asking them if the figure was now correct, and them saying it was.

I have now stopped ringing them as i can't afford for them to keep reducing it, even if it is a mistake.

i really think that the money wasted on the call centre, admin and publicity etc could have gone into increasing everyone's child benefit or larger tax allowances! The structure is in place already so there would be no extra expense. Instead we have a call centre full of badly trained staff, sometimes i feel sorry for them!!

hear hear yingers

I'm new to mumsnet but i'm so mad that I had to comment! When I first applied IR made a mistake with my wages and I phone and notified them and was awarded £18 p/4/w! When I had dd2 I April I phoned and then had to fill out forms because this conflicted with the reviews. Now I don't get any thing at all until November!! Our ann salaty is less than £30,000. i'm a civil servant but can't believe lack of training that these people seem to have had!

yingers, at least the write you with different figures. Every time we get a new award, they send it to me twice AND my dh twice, so we've got 4 copies of every award.

I received my tax award papers today and on reading all the info...i apparently have 6 children!!!!!
I kind of think i'd know if i'd produced five more offspring..
It's a farce!

Lilsmum don't worry if they've overpaid you as they just deduct any money that you owe them from whatever money you are still entitled to. Not sure if that makes sense but that is what I was told and what has happened to us. I asked a friend who works at the Citizens advice bureau and she told me that they aren't allowed to ask you to pay back money in a lump sum they will just take it back bit by bit.

We applied when it first started and were awarded CTC and WTC. Got a fair bit as the figures were based on the year 2001/2 and I had just started my job and hadn't worked a full year. Then this April we had the review. Because they were using the past years figures 2003/4 and I had done a full years work plus my hours had increased it took us slightly over the upper limit that we could go over, £2500? I think the limit is, anyway the lady on the phone said that it wouldn't affect it that much and to phone back in a few weeks when our 2nd baby had arrived. We got about 3 different award notices all with different payments listed.

I phoned back to say that our dd2 had arrived and when we got the award notice through they had stopped the WTC because apparently they had overpaid us the first year and we had to pay it back. WE have 3 award notices that say what we've overpaid but the figures on all 3 of them are different. When I mentioned this on the phone the lady said not to worry about it as they just deduct it from the CTC. So we are still getting the CTC but less than what we should be getting as they overpaid us in WTC the first year and are deducting this overpayment from our CTC award at the moment.

to be honest I'm still not sure if we're getting the right amount of money but it's just too confusing when I sit down and try to figure it out and everyone I've spoken to has given me different answers. I'm dreading next years review as I'm on maternity leave this year and I'm sure that's going to muck it all up again.

Maybe I'm just really dumb but the fact that when we first applied we had to use the figures from 2001/2 then it jumped to 2003/4 is really confusing. I'm sure if they'd asked for the figures from 2002/3 it would all have made more sense as our income wouldn't have jumped so much. Not sure if that makes sense but I know what I mean. With them seeming to miss out a year of course our income jumped a huge amount it was 2 years later. There is probably a simple explanation and reason for them doing this but I don't know what it is.

Oh yes we get a copy of the award sent to me and my dh so we have double copies of everything. still doesn't make any sense half the time though.

all i can say is thank god i am not alone here!!!! i thought i was really dumb because i couldnt grasp at all what the hell they are going on about... i too get sent 2 sheets of award details and 2 for my partner every time they send anything!! i think constantly about ringing them up to make sure i am getting the right amount but just feel exhausted just thinking about talking to these pillocks!! the whole thing is a complete joke i think they need to invest in training their staff properly, i just give up lol

womba1 - that is hilarious!!!!!!!!
And shocking at the same time!