If you’ve received a letter about Tax Credits, you have until 31 July to check your income details. This is to ensure you have been paid the correct amount. For help on how to calculate your income or how to renew use the following buttons:
Opinion
Tax Credits can be tricky. It’s difficult to understand amounts that are included or not, especially if you have had parental leave. For example, maternity allowance does not count as income, but elements of Statutory Maternity Pay do. So take care. Also the online system has been known to have difficulty accepting zero values where the pre-existing assessment has a value. It can assume that zero means no change when the actual value is zero.
PAYadvice is regulated under AML requirement by HMRC and may be able to assist where you face difficulties. Always take screen shots of any online tax credit filing. You may need the evidence to show what was actually entered when HMRC are chasing for repayments.
The service operates in arrears, so always consider that amounts being paid may need to be repaid if your circumstances change such as returning to work following parental leave, or receiving a pay rise or promotion.
The HMRC tax credit service can apply some unrealistic deadlines for response and challenging assessments, especially as they judge timings from the point of issuing letters yet their own postal delivery service can mean that letters are actually not received until 15 days later leaving a very short challenge period.
Take care and treat these contacts seriously.
PAYadvice.UK 7/7/2020