MeAgain, Yes, the letter was hand signed and not on the usual HMRC paper. As I'm here I'll take the opportunity to apologies to anyone from HMRC tax credits who I may have offended with my previous comment about 'more than one brain cell'. On reflection I'll say it's a failure of the entire system, in the main unattributable to the hard working staff who try their best but are given poor training and tools to do the job.

After much too'ing and fro'ing with the tax credit people, and receiving 3 reasons for not waiving my £1000 overpayment I went to see my M.P. 2 weeks later received a shower of new tax credit advices through. No covering letter, and we couldnt work out what was going on (my wife is an accountant so that tells you how poor the advices were). We then received £800 back credits through as they had waived and reassessed us from 2003. Finally received a letter signed by Dawn Primarolo telling us that we should never have had to go to so much effort to get them to listen, and she was very sorry. She refused to pay compensation for time and effort not to mention stress, so I'm off to small claims court with her letter to lodge a claim. go and see your M.P. as they have a hotline to people in the tax credit office that have more than one brain cell.

Dear all, To keep a long story very short... We received an overpayment in 2003, and the tax office paid us compensation for hassle via our MP, and they admitted it was their fault (they missed a zero from my pay when transposing the info to their systems. The amount we received each month exactly matched our daughters nursery fees, and as we didnt receive a benefit calc for 10 mths we thought the nursery fees would have formed part of the calc. Now we're being chased for paying back the overpayment and they are refusing to waive it, ignoring the fact they have admitted it was their fault (I have the letters from their sneior manager to our MP!) and having already paid us compensation for the hassle caused, the phone calls made, the letters written to get a benefit calc. I've tried talking to the 'helpline', but they tell me they can't speak to the tax credit people either, so they've sent another complaint form out for me to fill in....circles anyone? It's difficult to know where to take this one next, as we seem to have exhausted the process, and we can't get them to understand they have already admitted its their error and we couldnt have known about it. How can they effectively go back and reinterpret a decision they made in 2003? do I wait until they take me to court and then show the judge the evidence? It'll surely be thrown out?