Tax Credits - What can I claim?

[weej]

I received Tax credits for 2 years up until 2 years ago. Despite being truthful on the forms (they asked for the previous year's income), somehow I ended up owing them about £2500. The upshot is that I have not received any credit for the past 2 years, and they tell me that I still owe them about £900.

 

Is this fair and can I do something about it? The bottom line is that I'm pretty skint and could do with the extra cash.

 

Any help would be great.

 

JB

[johnhowell]

John,

 

We have just gone through this with the Inland Revenue - initially they wanted £1080 but then only asked for £460 !

 

Go to EntitledTo - your guide to benefits and tax credits and enter for each year the actually income for that tax year instead of the previous year. We used the March payslip instead of the P60 because the payslip shows the pension contribution paid and this can be deducted to determine the net income.

 

Take note of the entitlement of CTC and WTC each year.

 

We then went through all bank statements since tax credits started in April 2003 and took note of all dates with payments.

 

Reviewing all entitlements against actual payments we found that we only owe them £97 ! The error occured in January 2004 where they said we received £2500 in WTC whereas we had only received £151 !!!! Of course they do not make mistakes.

 

To make you laugh - the salary for this year 06/07 is recorded as £240,000 !!!! I wish

 

Take care,

John

[meagain]

To make you laugh - the salary for this year 06/07 is recorded as £240,000 !!!!

 

Make sure you tell them twice about this mistake (to remove doubt). When giving them the corrected value, separate it between yourself and partner (if any), as this is how it is recorded on the computer.

 

Ideally, if you have more than one of salary, self-employed earnings, benefits-in-kind and taxable benefits, you should also state the amounts separately - if you only receive income under one of these headings, you should tell them which it is. If you do this, it means they don't have to write back to you to break it down, which delays things further.

 

As for the other John, see my signature.