Urgent tax credits query

[diana hobbs]

help me please this is not my fault

 

today i got a letter from tax credits office belfast saying my daughter s award is subject to a random check and they want proof of her college or school before 1 march or i l have to repay all the money and face a penalty!

 

the thing is she is no at school! i wrote 2 letters in june telling them she was finishing and going to uni i never heard a word back so i thought that was the end of it as i never got any money

 

 

i didnt understand so i rang my bank and found out they have still been paying me into an account i no longer have i use a current account and there was nothing on there to show payments from them at all

 

the account number they supposedly have be paying it into does not exist!

 

how can i prove i have not received this money! apparantly they have been paying me 132 pound a week from sept as they assumed she s still in full time eduaction she is 19 in 2 weeks

 

im very worried ive done no wrong but with so much tax credits fraud around how can i make them believe i have not got any monies? i have several accounts some i dont use nd some i closed

 

now they will think im a fraud

 

what should i do?

 

thanks

diana

[blondebubbles]

Sorry, bit confused with your post.

 

The bank can see the payments getting made to an account you no longer have? Is the account closed?

 

You then said it doesn't exist? Do you mean because it's closed or it has never existed?

 

If HMRC had paid to a closed account the bank would have returned the payments.

[diana hobbs]

hi

no its a casbuilder account i no longer use i presumed the bank shut it because i havent used it in years i used to get tax credits paid into my current account once she finished uni i wrote to them and told them nowit seeems they did notget my letters and carried on paying it into the cashbuilder account i dont use

 

who will beleive me that i didnt know i had tax credits going into my account? no one will

im not a fraud i did write to them twice

[blondebubbles]

Your tax credits must have been getting paid there at some point though. They don't change your account without being told.

 

Anyway so as the money is still in that account then you can just repay whatever your overpayment is back to tax credit.

 

Call them and explain. Your claim will be stopped from 31/08/13. This is the date they use when a child goes to uni. They will then calculate your overpayment and you can use the money in that account to repay it.

[diana hobbs]

so do i just ring them and say i did not know it was still been paid? they would never believe me? yes i can pay it back but would i still have to pay a penalty?

this is not my mustake its theirs

 

so is monies paid util 31 aug each year? so from them until now i just send them a cheque?

im not a fraud

so what happned to the letters i sent them? i tried to ring but they never asnwer

[blondebubbles]

Just call and say "I wrote to you to tell you my child was at uni but it doesn't seem to have been updated, can you do so now? I hadn't realised I was still getting paid as it's not an account I use"

 

I'm not saying youre a fraud but if they didn't receive your letters it's not their mistake. They can't update something they don't know about.

 

Penalties are unlikely. The main thing to them is getting the overpayment back.

 

Money isn't paid to 31st August every year, this is just the date used for children moving from non advanced to advanced education.