Thanks Tawnyowl, some good advice and info from you there. When my father was made redundant, he got a £7k redundancy package which he and my mother used to pay off a large chunk of their debts. I think at this time, they have only the charge, the mortgage and a couple other debts (around £5k worth) which they are making regular payments for. From what you have described with when you went bankrupt, it seems very much like my parents situation. My mother was hoping it would just be my father going bankrupt but seeing as how there will probably be a shortfall oin the mortgage, it would seem she may have to also. With the form N245 you have suggested, my fathers income has reduced from about £18/annum to £3,380 (JSA), so def worth a look I think.

Hi, lots of good advice from you guys, thanks for the help. Think the first thing I will get them to do is send a SAR letter as suggested. @ PGH7447 - I think the original company was Car Craft (their first mistake). I think it was sub-prime finance used so high interest rate. Like I said, my math is good and to arrive at the £27k figure, they would have to apply interest to the interest from the previous year. So its like year 1 say 40% of 5.5k, then year 2 is 40% of that figure etc. I am shocked something like this could be allowed to be honest. No doubt other costs were added to the final figure such as court costs and fee's. @ IdaInFife - Apparently, when the charge was applied, the maximum of 8% interest on the total amount owed was applied (27,000 * 8% / 12 = £180/month) @ Tawnyowl - I think it is a sub-prime mortgage. The mortgage is aroung £100k and recently houses around here have been going for about £90- 95k at most. There is 15 years left on the mortgage. I think if the house were to be re-possessed, the mortgage company would get the first dibs on whatever is made from it. If there is not enough to cover the charge, someone told me the debt would be set against my father again. A debt management company would normally be a good idea, but from what my mother has told me, she has been with one and they messed up her payments on the £5.5k debt causing it to go to court in the first place. I will suggest she look into this again though or seing if they qualify for an IVA. Your idea of saving the money she would have otherwise paid to the mortgage and interest on the charge is basically what my mother was thinking. For 6 months, that would amount to just over £4k. She has looked at rent prices in the area and can get a place for around £400/month (plus bills on top). Considering their age and their potential combined income and monthly outgoings, unless there is some type of (reallistic) payment pland or deal that can be worked out, the repossession and bankruptcy route seems like the only way out. My parents would rather avoid bankruptcy but if your stuck in this type of situation, whats a person to do. @ boss lady - indeed, I have warned my parents not to rush into anything or they could end up with even more debt. In fact I was wondering if anyone knows what will happen if the house is repossessed, and the mortgage company are unable to sell it at a price which would cover the mortgage? Would the remaining amount still be payable? This is one thing I fear could happen resulting in the charge and remaining amount on the mortgage still to pay.

I have a bit of a complicated one here so I will try to explain as best I can. About 10 years ago my parent bought a car on finance which I think was worth about £10k so adding the interest and whatnot it would be a bit more. A few years after getting it, they hit hard times and couldn't afford to pay all of their bills. The car was repossessed and sold at auction but the amount outstanding after selling it was about £5 1/2k. The debt was later sold to a collection company and last year they were taken to court. The collection company won and were granted potential interest for 4 years on the outstanding sum. My math is good but I don't understand how they work it out, but the debt went from £5 1/2k to £27k with £180 interest to be paid each month. A charge has been put on the house which they currently have a £100k interest only mortgage. The house is in negative equity right now but even if it wasn't, because of the charge, they have been told they can not re-mortgage unless they can get enough to pay it off. They have been told they can not even sell the house unless they can get enough to cover the mortgage and the charge The thing is, the house is in both their names, but the debt is in my fathers name only. He was recently made redundant so is on JSA and looking for work. My mother works 70+hours a week to be able to pay bills and with the £180 interest on the charge, they can not see any way of clearing the charge. My question is, does anyone know any way of sorting the whole mess out? £27k for a car which wasn't even worth half that when new is horrendous and the interest on the charge is hurting causing problems with other bills, never mind actually paying any of the debt off. My fathers credit file is shot to crap anyway so he will never again be able to get a loan or a mortgage. My mother is looking at ways of trying to sort out the debt but none of us are legal experts. CAB were useless and just said she has no other option but to pay the debt. Recently she has been considering stopping payments on the mortgage, letting the house get repossessed, and my father claiming bankrupcy. They are both 50 years old btw. Can anyone suggest anything? Thanks.

I wouldn't even bother telling him my self, he's had ample oppertunity to change and refuses to. Return everything to sender and send a letter to each company informing them he no longer lives there.

Just cancel the credit card. I dont understand how the recurring transaction has moved to the new one issued to you but if you say it just sits in the draw not being used, get shot of it. Then if you do need a credit card, get a new one in a couple months or so, which will give enough time for the recurring subscription to lapse. If you are contacted by the company the subscription is for, you can tell them it was an unauthorised subscription which you never signed up for.

You should dispute the overpayment using a form TC846, stating you have made several attempts to ensure the amounts paid to you are correct and that you were informed by their staff that the amounts were correct. HMRC will suspend recovery of the overpayment until the dispute process has ended. This will at the very least give you a little more time to sort things out. This link http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/leaflets/cop26.pdf will take you to the HMRC guidance regarding overpayments including what you should do when there is an overpayment and what your responsibilities are. HMRC have a system whereby every time you contect them or they contact you or they send a letter or do anything to your case, notes are recorded on your record explaining what has happened. They should be able to check these and see you have made repeated attempts to ensure the amount paid to you is correct. This does not ensure that you will win and have the amount written off. If you have filled in the tax credit claim form incorrectly, or have not checked the renewals declerations before sending them back into HMRC each year, it is likely they will say you are at fault for providing incorrect information as the amount paid to you was based off of what you have provided to them. If you do lose, HMRC have several payment options available, including reducing any current tax credits you are receiving or allowing you to pay over a 12 month period. Even so just under £1,000 a month would cause hardship for most people, so I would suggest you contact them do come to some kind of arrangement if you have to pay them back. Hope this helps.

If you sent in the tax credit renewal forms at the end of the 07-08 tax year, you will be entitled to the underpayment from the begining of the 08-09 tax year right up to todays date as the renewals form proves you made a claim for the tax credits. They will have records and logged forms proving you made the claim and was denied the money you are entitled to due to some idiot who doesn't know their job. One thing i dont understand is how they told you you were overpaid. This is because the HMRC introduced a new rule meaning that if part way through the tax year you change jobs and get a bit more income, it will NOT affect your entitlement or the amount you get unless you are paid £25,000 MORE than you had previously been paid. Therefore whoever told you this should be given some training (link showing this HM Revenue & Customs: Changes in income and tax credits). btw I would suggest everyone (including people who think they are not entitled) should make a claim for tax credits. Then if you find later in the year you are entitled, you get it backdated to 3 months before the date you claimed. Otherwise, the maixum you can backdate it is just 3 months.

If you are working now or on JSA, your tax district will be the first three numbers of your employers/jobcentre's reference i.e. 948/gz1453 - the first three numbers are the tax district (948 being South Wales). Any letters or phone calls should be directed at the dax distric for those numbers as this is where your tax record will be held (and will be the only place able to access it). Im guessing when you say the 2002 year, you mean the tax year 6th April 2002 to 5th April 2003, but if you mean 6th April 2001 to 5th April 2002 i dont think you will be able to claim. The information you will need will be any and all income received in the tax year from all jobs and tax paid (as they might not have this information) and any benefits you received from employment like company car etc. Also if you had any state benefits while unemployed. Any redundancy payment received is tax free up to £30,000 so you should have only paid tax on anything over that amount. If you have any P60's or P45's these will help a lot also.

You could send a complaint in and hope this gets picked up by their complaints team and doesn't go into this huge pile of post they seem to have. Also, you could try contacting your local MP and see if they will get on their case. I know from experience in the rev that ANY MP case is sorted as a matter of urgency. The person you spoke to is probably correct in saying that some offices are closing as currently the HMRC are closing smaller offices and moving people into large urban areas. Still, the amount of time you have been waiting (and will still have to wait) is terrible and poor service on the revs part, they should have recorded the post, worked and completed it within a ten day time limit (which is what they had when I was there). I would suggest you contact the revs phone contact centre for your tax district, and ask them to do an informal calculation. Explain to them that you have been waiting for more than 28 days since you sent the P50 in and the fact you have had to pay all of your tax at BR has caused hardship. You can use the pay and tax figures from your P45 when you ask and if as you say you have not had any other income, they should be able to do the calculation there and then. Also there are a number of frree online calculators which can tell you how much you have overpaid. However, if you are planning to go onto jobseekers allowance or get a new job any time soon, it should be sorted out pretty quickly if you give them your P45.

I would have to agree with Coniff in asking how a cashier who sits there and counts money all day 5 days a week could posibly mis-count £300, if it were a few pound then yes that is easy enough, or at most £50 (mis-count one £50 note). But £300 doesn't seem possible unless the cashier is very careless in what they are doing. I would check both accounts to see if the numbers match up as it may just be an error on your receipts. Personally, if the bank has made the error, I wouldn't inform the banks and just wait for them to come to me with enough proof that i owe them money. I would also put the extra £300 away somewhere safe in case they do come back later to get their money.

You could also go to your local newspaper (or a national one) and get them to do a story about how an some idiot has refused someone who obviously deservs the allowance. Newspapers love this kind of story.

As Saintly 1 said, it is because the government have removed the 10% tax rate band and reduced the basic rate band to 20%. When they announced it there were quite a few people who complained and rightly so as it penalised people on low pay. On average, anyone paid less than the £12,000/year area were now paying an extra few hundred pound a year tax. To rectify this (and to help them with the impending elections) the government increased the basic personal allowance from 5435 to 6035, which is £600 more tax free pay each year, and they also reduced the income threshold of the basic rate band from £36,000 to £34,800 meaning people on higher income dont really benefit from it, only people on lower income. The result is that as long as your pay is above a certain amount, you will get some tax back in the month of September, and you will also pay less tax for the remainder of the year. However, this increasedoes not affect NI payments and it is possible (likely) your tax code will go down again come the new tax year on 06/04/09.

You'd be surprised how much these old people have sitting in bank accounts, they stick a little in here and there and by the time they retire, they have quite a bit sometimes, often spread out over a few accounts. The 1k was just an easy figure to use for the example though. The more common occurance would be getting a couple hundred pounds in interest and I'm sure Dorris would be happy to get that back.

Tell the dog owner you are going to report his dog for being dangerous if it isn't controlled and if he is bitten once more, he will sue the dog owner. Also take some pics of his current injuries. He is not paid to be attacked by dogs. I wouldn't ACTUALLY report the dog as I like dogs and ultimatelly it is the owners fault, the dog is just doing its job. But it might scare the crap out of the owner the thought that their dog will be destroyed. With the guy complaining about not having any post, he could write a note saying there is no mail today and post that. I agree that people deserve a good service from the royal mail, but 9 times out of 10 the poor service is completely out of the hands of the poor postie delivering the mail and he doesn't deserve the abuse.

Hi, This thread is aimed more at people who don't earn allot of money through work or pensions, but do get a bit of bank interest on their savings like pensioners, so might be useful to pass on to your grandparents maybe. When you earn interest on any money you have in your bank account, by default it is taxed at 20% by the bank unless you tell them you are not liable to tax. The problem is, people like pensioners for instance who just have their state pension and maybe another small pension are not aware that they should not be paying this tax. Another problem also is that unless you send the relevant forms into the revenue, they will not pay this money back like they would if you had paid too much tax in work. Example: Dorris is 65 and in the 07/08 tax year gets a state pension of £4000 and a private pension of say £2500. She also has a nice bit of money in the bank and gets £1000 bank interest. Total of £7500, this is all of her income in the year. As the tax free allowance for her would be 7550 being over 65, her income is less than her allowance. But the bank by default would have charged her 20% on the £1000 meaning she has paid £200 tax which she is due back. In order to get it back, all she would need to do is phone the revenue and ask for a form "R40 Tax paid on interest". She would have been sent a statement or certificates from her bank detailing how much interest and tax has been paid. She can if she likes just staple this toi the R40, fill in her income details, sign it and sent to the rev who will then send her any money owed to her. The R40 also works with other types of income so even if she didn't have bank interest but thinks she overpaid on a pension or a trust, she can use the R40 to claim that back too. This will likely happen more from 08/09 onwards as people over 65 have had their tax allowances greatly increased. So if anyone has a grandparent with a little bit of money in the bank, could be worth letting them know about this.