I've just found out my whole tax credit claim for 3 years is owed back (£6,000)

[Things change I've changed]

yey me!

Just had a letter through the post to update my tax credit details and apparently my whole claim over the last 3 years in invalid even though I ring up and give them my end of year totals every year, I thought I was being transparent, apparently it's because my hours went under 30 a week, I'm probably going to owe around £6,000 , for some reason I thought it was minimum 16 hours, I suppose I assumed that because most people I know that are claiming it have children where as I don't.

What gets my goat though is ok, technically I suppose I'm in the wrong and I should have known better, but surely they must have known I was under 30 hours from looking at my end of year earning figures that I've been submitting every year?, why wait 3 years to check up on my hours, also when I submitted my p60 figures every year over the phone they never asked what my hours were 'but' I was told today 'that' is covered under "any change of circumstances", I guess that covers them pretty well.

I always feared one day I'd be one of those people your hear about owing thousands back to the tax office, I guess my day is here, just annoys me that this system allows these types of mistakes so easily when there could be automated checks at a system level to prevent many of these overpayments, I'll never claim anything from the government again after this.

Has anyone on here managed a successful appeal in similar circumstances?

 

[Destination]

How were you ever able to claim working families tax credit without having children?
I am confused.
Was it income support you were claiming?

I'd love to be able to knock six grand off my taxbill, but despite having a kid, I get no relief and no benefit at all for her existing.
What a complicated tax system we have when they want people to keep filling in forms to get free money back, would be easier to dedicate the revenue staff to investigative sork, and changing the flat rate of tax to cope with low earners.
That way they could claw back from those evading, rather than expect people to do the forms correctly all of the time. Each year we heard reently how the silly revenue spreadsheet was wrong and couldn't cope with people who moved jobs, wouldn't be the case if this complex gubbins didn't exist in the first place.

 

[Things change I've changed]

How were you ever able to claim working families tax credit without having children?

I was just claiming regular working tax credits, I think when I initially began the claim I was working over 30 hours, then my hours dropped below that threshold, every year when I got a claims pack I rang up the tax office and updated my yearly earnings, I never even thought about my hours tbh, I just assumed that it was all worked out based off my earnings, that seemed to be the prevalent detail they wanted when I rang them up every year to update my claim, the system should have known based off those figures that I was under 30 hours.

 

[ThundyCat]

We have the same issue, and have to pay back £2200.00 in over payments on our child tax credits.

For some reason they had me working 60hrs a week and earning nothing!

 

[dowie]

While it does suck that they didn't have better systems in place to prevent this sort of thing early on there is also the obvious responsibility on your part to ensure that whatever claim for tax relief/credits/whatever you want to call it... was correct.

I don't see why you should be able to appeal - you've still been avoiding more tax than you should in a situation where you weren't entitled to. If pleading ignorance was an excuse or trying to blame HMRC for not catching you sooner then lots of people would be happy to submit fraudulent claims in the hope they too could simply claim 'I didn't know'...

 

[Things change I've changed]

We have the same issue, and have to pay back £2200.00 in over payments on our child tax credits.

For some reason they had me working 60hrs a week and earning nothing!

Are you going to try appealing?

While it does suck that they didn't have better systems in place to prevent this sort of thing early on there is also the obvious responsibility on your part to ensure that whatever claim for tax relief/credits/whatever you want to call it... was correct.

I don't see why you should be able to appeal - you've still been avoiding more tax than you should in a situation where you weren't entitled to. If pleading ignorance was an excuse or trying to blame HMRC for not catching you sooner then lots of people would be happy to submit fraudulent claims in the hope they too could simply claim 'I didn't know'...

I accept that and this is obviously an expensive lesson, but I still don't see how they continued to accept my claim which is renewed yearly based off the figures I was giving them, it should have been flagged early on.

 

[Raymond Lin]

On one hand it is frustrating as you have gotten used to a certain level of income and your life style and outgoings would reflect that.

On the other hand if it was never yours to begin with then you need to pay it back. Which means you have to tighten your belt for a while.

See it as it was an interest free loan? (unless the repayment includes interests too)

 

[ThundyCat]

Are you going to try appealing?

Already have and they rejected our claim.

Even though it was a keying in error by them, they still insist that we pay it back. (And they admitted it)

Apparently WE should have picked up on that I was down as earning nothing.

 

[Destination]

Why would the system know you are working less hours if you do not state it under change of circumstances?

 

[Things change I've changed]

Why would the system know you are working less hours if you do not state it under change of circumstances?

The system would know based on my end of year earnings that I submit, if your required to work a minimum of 30 hours a week it should be a simple sum to work out that my submitted figures are way under that.

 

[BDEE]

Already have and they rejected our claim.

Even though it was a keying in error by them, they still insist that we pay it back. (And they admitted it)

Apparently WE should have picked up on that I was down as earning nothing.

Well they do send you an award notification with all the figures on which tells you to call them if anything is wrong, so they have a point.

 

[Things change I've changed]

This is what's crazy though, 'technically' I've not had any extra money given to me from the government as a whole because I declare my tax credits to the council for housing benefits and they lower my entitlement because of that, if I was not eligible for tax credits over the last 3 years then I would have got the extra money through the council instead, I'm hoping to argue that point in an appeal or tribunal as what I earned in tax credits I lost in housing benefit.

 

[ThundyCat]

Well they do send you an award notification with all the figures on which tells you to call them if anything is wrong, so they have a point.

Absolutely.

Just frustrating that we didn't pick up on it. Especially as it had me working 60hrs a week.

 

[Goodie]

My girlfriend had a letter just before christmas saying that she had underpaid between 2009-2010 and that she owed £500. We went back and looked through her wage slips and the p60 to find that there calculations were incorrect and that she hadn't earned the amount during that tax year that they said she had. We sent them a letter with all of the evidence and it still hasn't been sorted out. Calls to them just lead to us hearing that they are dealing with it. Doesn't stop the fact that they are now taking the money off her through an altered tax code for this year.

I know that we will get the money back eventually, its just irritating how long it takes to resolve.

 

[Shimmyhill]

Its actually pretty clear that you have to tell them of any changes in hours worked, big part of the form and mentioned several times in the renewal form.

My wife works technically 3 jobs so we have all this fun each time something changes, however we don't qualify for anything so don't bother claiming anymore - every time we have had an award its been wrong, we have had to back pay for their mistakes too and the whole system is a sham.

However the fault is the OP's with this one as the hours thing is very clear.

 

[aln]

Whilst I have sympathy for you not knowing, it would be silly for the state to give out tax-credits for non-full time workers, as it'd just promote people within the appopriate payscale to choose to work less hours.

Being that it's the .Gov, you should be able to orginise a payment plan that doesn't really harm your bottom line, Make that point that its a hardship to be expected to pay the money back, whilst simultaneously earning less.

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

As the OP has no kids, I think he has the disability version like I do.

I made a mistake with my 2011-12 salary saying that I earn £12,500 and have £2,500 in savings. They counted that as £15,000. The mistake I made was that they're only interested in the interest you get from taxable savings, which to me is none. I'm still waiting for my end-of-year letter where I declare that I really only earnt £12,500 not £15,000. Will I be in for a small windfall?

 

[DJMK4]

How the hell do people get these cheques, do you have to chase them or do they tell you?

 

[Rroff]

They really are incompetant - I had a situation when I started working again after a brief period of being unemployed where they chased me up at great lengths over £14 they'd "overpaid" me but were completely uninterested when I told them that the amount they'd actually overpaid me was over £400 and just kept insisting I paid back the £14.

 

[The Halk]

incompetant

Edit : Oops, sweary watermark in gif.