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kingpike
Rank; Hector Tax Inspector
3 Posts |
 Posted - 12/01/2009 : 23:04:34
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A word of caution, if the Adjudicators Office send you a form consenting to them asking HMRC to consider the case for repayment on hardship grounds.
The wording on the form could imply, that the person signing the form, accepts that the overpayment is valid and that they are liable for any repayment.
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Ali M-W
Da Tech(y ones)
3296 Posts |
Posted - 13/01/2009 : 06:18:34
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Thanks, Kingpike - I've made this topic "sticky" so it stays visible at the top of this thread as a warning to others. Even after three years of campaigning, it never ceases to shock and amaze me just how underhand the tactics are to get us to pay back money we didn't solicit, were told was our entitlement (often being assured again and again), spent in good faith for the good of our families, and are then bullied into repaying without access to the proper dispute and complaint pathways. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
I now recall that when I first sent off my TC846 to dispute recovery of the overpayment, I not only stated that I had been fully compliant and had done nothing wrong, but said that recovery of money already spent would cause me hardship. Nothing was mentioned about hardship until the Adjudicator arrived on the scene, and then this was almost the first thing she said. She told me that she was surprised the hardship angle wasn't picked up by HMRC at all, and immediately asked me for a breakdown of all my income and outgoings so she could consider a hardship claim.
I refused! The reason I did so, and I told her this, was that MY CASE WAS STILL IN DISPUTE! I told her that I would only ever consider this after I had exhausted the whole dispute process including the Ombudsman and court action of my own (I don't mean the kangaroo court HMRC threaten claimants with - beware - that is not your day in court but your taste of rough justice, because no claimant evidence ever gets heard unless you evoke Article 6, Right to a Fair Trial and go armed with the LITRG's article on what the court should allow you to do, even with HMRC writing its own Certificate of Debt unchecked.) I insisted that I wasn't going to plead inability to repay as though begging HMRC for mercy when in actual fact the 'debt' should never stand. I even rang the HMRC policy team to tell them I was doing this, and the Ombudsman too, just to check that the Adjudicator wasn't going to hold this against me.
They conceded this point, and investigated my case. I was expecting to win, because my evidence was foolproof - at the time it was the discredited "reasonableness" test, and I had reasonably believed my award was correct because what HMRC had put on successive award notice didn't match what they had done behind the scenes. I'd even had an insightful friend challenge the award HMRC had given me in the first place, concluding that at that stage nothing was owed! The Adjudicator had set rigid timescales for examining my case. As these approached, she turned down the extra evidence I'd sent. I pasted letters on this forum from the Adjudicator, but had inadvertently left the closing signature on there. The wrath of the Adjudicator's office descended upon me! Suddenly I was Public Enemy Number One. Guess who got a stern letter and immediately lost their case?! A few letters to the HMRC poilicy team and to Jane Kennedy pointing out that I never wanted to or intended to claim Russian Roulette tax credits ever again, and that they were saving more than the £700 I wanted them to write off (it's a long story, but I'd got the rest of the original £6500 written off bit by bit before that point - HMRC was fighting over £700 and costing us all more in the process!) got that finally sorted out.
The moral is not to let these despicable tactics grind you down but to stand your ground. Everyone I have been in contact with who has not done anything wrong (not counting, of course, the following of bad HMRC advice) who has refused to give in and insisted they are in the right has eventually won. The one exception, of course, has been the leader of Tax Credit Casualties, whose case, from the evidence, should have been written off virtually from the outset - my friend Paula Dean. She actually holds proof from her data request that her case is too 'political' and sensitive to be written off. This is the British tax credit system for you!
Alan, on another section of this forum, is posting media example after media example of ways in which our civil liberties are being eroded. If there is one silver lining to the misery the tax credit system has caused me, apart from the good friends made along the way as we've been challenging these injustices, is that it has opened my eyes to just what lies beneath some of the governmental systems which I formerly just accepted were honest and hust in their treatment of people. As Kingpike has shown here, quite clearly, they are not.
Things will only change if enough of us kick up enough stink about it.
To anyone reading this - if you want to go just that little bit further than fighting just your own case, please contact me at ali@taxcc.org
Let's make 2009 the year that tax credit injustices get sorted out, election or no election.
(correction = unfinished sentence changed)
Trinity: No one has ever done anything like this.
Neo: That's why it's going to work.
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Edited by - Ali M-W on 13/01/2009 06:20:57 |
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Adjudicators Office Assets and Liabilities Consent
