Just realised husband's income recorded as 0 for 2011-12 tax credits - worried sick about renewal!!!

[Desperatelyworried]

Hi there,

 

I've been stupidly careless and am now desperately worried about renewing our tax credits for the current year!

 

I called TC back in August to let them know that I'd given up my office job to become f-t self-employed and that my twin daughters had stopped going to nursery. I gave them my new estimated income for the year which was a lot lower than previously due to being a fairly new business etc. Shortly after, our payments went up by quite a lot which I presumed was due to our change in circumstances.

 

I'm now going through all the paperwork to complete our renewal for this year and seen that they'd set my husbands salary to £0, instead of the £20k I notified them of! I glanced over the award notice when it came at the time, but didn't notice the error All this means that the tax credits we've been receiving have been based solely on my salary and estimated income from self-employment i.e. only about £5k!!

 

I received a letter from B&C Compliance Operations saying they were doing a random check on childcare which is fine and correct, but I also need to complete my annual declaration by 28 June which is now obviously going to be much higher than what our actual earnings were.

 

I'm worried sick about what all this is going to mean. I'm struggling a bit with my business at the moment due to my daughters' change in sleep/behaviour and being on a long waiting list for council childcare. I should hopefully get a place for them come August which will mean my ability to earn will increase, but meanwhile I am paying my share of the bills out of my tax credits payments. I accept that I'll need to pay back the overpayment, but am scared that all payments will be stopped until it's all paid back. I'm expecting our earnings for the current year to be around £23k combined.

 

Anyway, after that long rambling post, please can anyone give me a likely indication to the outcome of all this? Has this happened to anyone before? I see that TC get round mistakes they've made by saying that we should check their work so I'm guessing I won't be able to argue it at all?

 

In short, PLEASE HELP ME I'm so scared!!

[Gbarbm]

Hi

I believe the situation you describe was a known error on the tax credit computer system at that time. Whenever a change of circumstances was actioned, for some reason the system deleted other income at the same time.

That of course us not your fault and you reasonably believed your tax affairs were in good order.

Google COP 26 (this is HMRCs code of practice relating to tax credit overpayments)

Write to HMRC (send it by recorded signed for delivery) and advise them that you have recently noticed that they have altered your husbands annual income to nil.

State that you never advised them that his income was nil and explain that whilst you appreciate there will be an overpayment of tax credits, as you had a reasonable belief that the amounts being paid were correct, you feel that HMRC should remit the overpayment

[MrSmith1]

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Edited July 20, 2012 by MrSmith1