Grrr doesn’t even begin to cover it!
It’s taht anual tax credt debacle time of year again. I have obviously blanked out the full glory of last year’s debacle as I don’t remember certain pertinant points as raised by the supercillious prat I spoke to just now. I don’t, for instance, remember being told that I was breaking the law by not having provided information on who we are both working for although aparently this information was requested and (to quote him) "it looks like the conversation didn’t end well last time either" by which I assume I am on file as being a stroppy cow (coo, even people who don’t know me have worked that one out!) Although I do remember when Duke was in and out of work, being permenantly on the phone to this most delightful of agencies to update tehm on who was employing him on what salary for that particular week, or not, as the case may be. I quite distinctly remember having them on speed dial. I also quite distinctly remember receiving tax credits last year in proportion to our income and thus would assume that therefore they are perfectly capable of processing a claim without these details.
Aparently this year they can’t process my claim without up to date and also fully backdated to the beginning-of-time employment records. There is no reference to an employer on my current circumstances detail sheet for me to check and confirm or deny the correctness thereof, although if you plow through the copious notes they send it does say taht you need to tell them when you change job. What they have on file is not any of the employers I can remember him working for over the past several years. Not that they will tell me what employer they have recorded because that would be breaking the data protection act, neither will they disclose the date that this employment started other than it was longer than 2 years ago. When I pointed out that under the very same Data Protection Act of which he spoke I had a right to know any details held about me he sounded vaguely surprised taht I would know about such petty details and said I could write requesting a full disclosure of all the data they held. Funny how he offered that info only after I threw the law back in his face and not when i asked for it politely so that I could at least sort this out (and I asked in several ways ranging from "oh, right, what details do you hvae then?" to "well, is there any way I can get hold of the information so I can check if it is correct or not then?" all of which were denied.) In the mean time of course, Duke’s money has gone down from a half decent £22k last year (working 2 jobs) to around £13k this year. Funnily enough, it was when I mentioned that huge money drop that suddenly it became important that they had employer details, presumably they need to contact them and say "how dare you pay such crap wages and make the government top it up to a livable wage" (shall we gloss over the fact that if they made the national minimum wage a livable wage then they wouldn’t need to? although, naturally, if both of us were good little workers on NMW it would actually be almost livable) or maybe more like "is your employee lying about his income"
But you know, what really pisses me off is that this is part HM Revenue and Customs. That’s the people who gather our taxs and thus the people who know, to the last penny, how much any person in the UK has earned in the past 12 months. Not to mention they know who anyone is working for at any one time (assuming the company is above board, not paying cash in hand etc obviously) So how is it that the information can’t go from one office to another without all this pratting about? I mean, I can do my car tax on line, they check on a database of insured vehicles and on a database of MOT’ed vehicles instantly and seemingly effortlessly then plunder your bank account (which is, in effect another database for them to access) to take the money for your car tax, how then is is so hard to look on just one database for a person’s income and top it up accordingly FFS?????
despite the fact that we currently have not very much money (just me earning rather less than last year) I’m assuming that we’d get not much because we were earning lots last year. I can’t face dealing with them again
Comment by Jax — May 12, 2008 @ 7:19 pm
Jax, it’s your money, you deserve it so yes, it’s worth banging horns with them over it! Your credits are only based on last year’s income if this year’s is likely to be round about teh same. If you take a drop in income then they re-assess it, ask you why you haven’t told them who you have been working for (unless you noticed that bit about telling them if you change employer as well as if your money goes up and down?) and, eventually, you get an award based on your current earnings.
Comment by Administrator — May 12, 2008 @ 8:09 pm
did you get a call from them, or is this an update after you sent in your renewal form? We got a call and need to confirm all James’ jobs for last year, but hadn’t sent renewal in as all complicated and need to make sure all right iykwim. Thought I’d have at least till July, but now I need to do it in the next week, so need to get my finger out and remember dates - eek!
I seem to remember thinking we had no problems with tax credits and then bang this past year has been a bit of a nightmare. Oh to earn enough to not rely on it *sigh*
Comment by Kirsty — May 12, 2008 @ 9:23 pm
Urgh - got to do ours I suppose. Not looking forward to that one bit, and our situation is fairly simple with no changes of jobs!
Comment by Joanna — May 12, 2008 @ 9:40 pm
ooo you shouldn’t get me started on this one!!!!! M moving in with me has meant I had to cancel my claim as a single person and and reclaim as a couple, you can not be proactive about it, you can only do it AFTER the change has happened. They wouldn’t even send me the form so I could have it ready to send back on the date of the change. Funnily enough they had no problem cancelling my last claim on that date not 3 weeks later which it will probably take to get the new claim up and running. M’s circumstances have changed from last year, but no we have to give them all of last years details, get the claim set up, and THEN ring them again to report a change of circumstances. Bloody backwards system. I’m sure this will all be hard because of Ms fluctuating income and self-employed status. Then we have CSA on top of it all, who, once they work out our tax credits then take a slice to give to his ex-wife!!!
Comment by Em — May 12, 2008 @ 9:58 pm