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HMRC Tax Credits - the saga of the cover-up continues

One reason used for HMRC to ask people to pay their tax credits back is the so called "no receipt" of the annual return. What it means is that if the annual return gets lost in the post then people have to repay all the tax credits and there is no way of changing this.

I did win for one of my constituents mainly by threatening judicial review. However, I have been researching this and there clearly are a lot of similar cases.

I have asked two parliamentary questions and my office has asked an FOI question to find out how many people fall into this category.

The First PQ got a sort of "none" answer. So I rephrased it so they couldn't squirm out of answering it and got a "disproportionate cost" answer. This normally means the answer is embarrassing.

Under FOI we got the answer "this information is not available at this level" we have appealed asking for the information from another level and will over time go to the Information Commissioner.

This is an obvious cover up. I asked Harriet Harman about the issue and she said that it was an issue.

My guess is that it involves a lot of people and a lot of money and the government don't want to have to pay the money. If the issue is properly understood they wouldn't get away with this.

Comments

Susan Gaszczak said…
I am one of the Tax credit 'victims'. I am having to repay nearly £4000 because the Tax credit people have no record of my informing them of a change in income in 2003. I have not been in receipt of any credits for nearly 4 years now and have given up the fight. I am sure there are many more people out there like me.
8:39 am
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