Okay, we had been on HBen and Ctaxben for nearly 20 years (god that's shameful) any recalculation resulting in us owing paid back, etc etc. Hubs got a good job in 2015/16,stopped all claims. Hooray! Hubs made redundant (no pay out, zero hours etc), claims restarted 2016. Within about 6 weeks hubs in new job but low pay, so continue claiming with reviews, evidence on a yearly, etc. Also hubs gets Working Tax Credits, also regularly reviewed, reassessed, recalculated, any overpayment paid back. I get a job in 2018 but payroll mess up for first 3 months onths (no pay. No payroll number. No income. I provide payslips as soon as I get them, claim continues.)So now both on low pay, continue claim with new evidence, etc. I get a better job in April 2020! Better pay, evidence provided, earning too much to claim now, so Hooray again! MAY 2020. Recalculation. Unable to provide evidence of Hubs start in 'new' job 2016 (hang on, we did all that at the time, why are they asking again?). They decide we owe money. We make arrangement, start paying back. FEB 2021 We get a letter saying an Interview under caution is required because they suspect fraud. WTF? Panic. Research. Agree to Teams interview (due tomorrow) APRIL 2021 Letter from HMRC saying hubs has been on wrong Tax code since 2016 (that effing year again, WTF?) and owe them money too. So, could the wrong tax code be the reason we were flagged for fraud? If this all boils down to an HMRC cock up rather than something we did wrong, can we sue, tribunal etc? How can this go on for 5 years without someone at HMRC noticing? What happened in 2016??????? Can we challenge any of this because we are adamant that we have declared everything accurately at the time? And WHY did they decide the middle of a DEADLY EFFING PANDEMIC was a good time to target two school support workers who were among the very few still actually going in to work, keeping the key worker kids safe with sod all PPE, FFS why us??? We have always done the right thing, kept our heads down, worked hard, never claimed more than we were entitled to, got jobs that are socislly useful and respectable even though low paid. We've been in the system long enough to know that it's not supposed to be easy, but this is a whole other level of ridiculous. We're bouncing between questioning why we bother getting out of bed on a daily (on bad days it's questioning the point of life in general) and being so damn furious that HMRC are probably lucky I don't live near enough to visit an office in person and give them a piece of my mind.

So, in the last 12 months we have had : HBen and Ctax recalculation resulting in Huge debt, a fraud interview thingy in a few days and today a bill from HMRC for underpaid tax since 2016. Aparrently all these issues go back to 2016 - considering everything is reviewed annually, everything we earn is through PAYE and we have always declared everything to everyone, WHY has it taken them 5 YEARS to notice any problems, why do they suspect fraud if any mistakes were THEIRS and can we do ANYTHING to get any of the debt written off? We have always provided evidence of everything to everyone (that feeling of handing you entire financial history to some office monkey is the best isn't it?) - so the mistake seems to lie with HMRC/Capita I çant believe that it's coincidence this has all happened during COVID. What's more likely - that there have been continuous cockups unnoticed for 5 years or that someone WFH for Capita/HMRC has cocked up this year? We are both key workers, exhausted with working through Covid (no WFH for us plebs, gotta keep those vulnerable and key worker kids in school while the teachers got to WFH) and totally baffled as to how everything has gone so horribly wrong - please advise!