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Gkrazyharry
Rank; Hector Tax Inspector
United Kingdom
2 Posts |
 Posted - 15/01/2009 : 12:13:29
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Am I still able to dispute the allegations of owing the tax credit office over £2,000 from 2003- 2004. even though I have had a visit from a debt collector asking me to make payment arragements. I have very little information as i did not save anything, i.e. names I spoke to etc.
the bottom line is I ignored most correspondence from the tax credit office, I would ring them but not follow up on what was asked or said. have I gone too far down the line to be saved. Are you able to help, if so where would I start. I have asked my bank for bank statements, spoken with the tax credit office and informed them that I wish to contest amount (I do think I would owe them something but not over £2000). should i aske for the information that thay may have on my account. Please Help
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samthe
Rank; Private Primate
188 Posts |
Posted - 15/01/2009 : 20:14:09
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1. Look at the info. on disputing on the tccorg main site.
2. Do a SARN to get all your paperwork, CD of calls, screen prints etc.
3. Write to them (always by recorded delivery & keep a copy) saying you dispute the overpayment and asking for a detailed explanation of how the alleged overpayment arose and a calculation of how the amount is made up. Once the dispute is logged they should stop chasing you for payment until it is resolved, but this may not be the case if they have already taken you to Court and got a CCJ.
4. However, if you really did ignore correspondence & not follow things up you did yourself no favours and may find it much more difficult to get things settled in your favour. BUT you should not have to pay anything more than the correct amount you owe, & are fully entitled to an explanation and calculation that you can understand and check (if you still have your own paperwork to check it with). |
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Ali M-W
Da Tech(y ones)
3296 Posts |
Posted - 16/01/2009 : 07:08:08
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Hi Gkrazyharry, and welcome to the club no-one wants to join! To get to our main site - if you didn't get to this forum via the main website but found this site first - either click on www.taxCC.org or hit the "Home" link at the very top right hand corner of this page.
That'll take you to our home page, with all its goodies. From there, please go to our Petition and sign that, and see if anyone else you know will do likewise (it doesn't just have to be signed by victims who discover it, but can be widely circulated and signed). You'll also find a link for "Voices of the Victims" where other Tax Credit Casualties tell their stories (a good link or document to send to your MP, by the way), and for our Dispute Pack, which you'll be wanting for a SARN request and tips on how to get HMRC to suspend recovery action and to properly explain things to you.
There's a big backlog of post in and out of HMRC at the moment (I wonder why?!), so don't expect a response any day soon, but at least if you stop their often aggressive recovery tactics, you will have a breathing space and time to familiarise yourself with the thongs you'll need to do for a successful dispute.
I've learned from my own case and from others' experiences that whilst there is a policy which HMRC must follow to recover money, and a process for disputing recovery, they don't always play by the book, and consequently we can be flexible and creative, too. Thus, just because the HMRC heavy mob has already come to your door, it doesn't mean your case is hopeless - it just means that we have to point out to HMRC that they have bypassed their own processes somewhere along the line for you to only be thinking about your own rights at this late stage. I was told by a senior HMRC Tax Credit Policy employee that even those who have repaid tax credits can still dispute if they think the recovery unjust, HMRC at fault, and did not have the chance to pursue the dispute process before repaying. And I have seen people with a County Court Judgment overcome this and be told they do not have to repay (after a fight, and getting support from us, of course). So it's never too late to dispute and complain to HMRC if the treatment you have received with your tax credits falls short of good practice.
To win, you must be innocent of any deception and believe that you did only what you thought you had to, or were told by HMRC to do; in your case that if you didn't deal with important correspondence from them, it was because you didn't really understand it, had no-one to advise you, found it confusing or that something else was going on in your life which stood in the way. If you believe yourself to be well-intentioned and not the cause of all the problems with your claim, you are half way there. You then just need to be determined, seek out and provide evidence in support of your account of events, and keep pushing until HMRC finally accepts this.
I hope you find Samthe's excellent advice above helpful, and that you can take heart from it. If the worst comes to the worst, you might be looking at the situation described in point 4 above, where a chunk of the alleged overpayment is written off, and the rest you may end up paying back by instalments. I am not going to predict or pre-judge the result, however, as you will be amazed by what comes to light from a SARN request, and it may well be that HMRC has made mistakes all down the line, winning you a write-off.
It's long been said that a change of administration and a new Prime Minister is likely to lead to great changes in the tax credit system, which all but Brown acknowledge to be inaccurate and dangerous at times. With the post backlog at HMRC being horrific, it just might be the case that we get an election before we get proper explanations. If a Tax Credit overpayment Amnesty is granted by a new administration for all non-fraudulent overpayments, it could mean that those locked in a lengthy dispute get a write-off before they have exhausted the dispute process.
We will only get an Amnesty if enough pressure is brought to bear on the government to change this system, so if everyone in dispute were to write to their MPs and complain about this system, it would advance our cause tremendously.
Already the Lib Dems have listened to us and want the onus to be on HMRC to prove claimants did wrong rather than on us to prove that they did. We now need to get the Tories and Labour to spell out what they intend to do to help what the Bishop of Durham's Canon describes as 'the innocent indebted'.
This isn't just a campaign for a handful of activists but for everyone here, and so please do all you can not just to fight your own case but to spell outb the problems and injustices to your MP.
Thanks, and good luck!
Trinity: No one has ever done anything like this.
Neo: That's why it's going to work.
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Gkrazyharry
Rank; Hector Tax Inspector
United Kingdom
2 Posts |
Posted - 21/01/2009 : 12:49:02
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| thank you for the information... i have found the website of great interest and i am acting on your advise. |
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Have I Left it too Long
