Contact Tax Credit Casualties

Please Read Before E-Mailing Tax Credit Casualties

It is currently taking me longer than usual to respond to e-mails, due to the recent huge rise in Tax Credit overpayment cases. It usually takes me about a week to respond, but it is becoming increasingly impossible to get through all e-mails in that time and so it may take me up to 14 days from now on.

I know most of you are very worried and looking for immediate advice. It can be frustrating knowing you've waited two weeks for a response from me when my reply turns out to be mainly questions, rather than answers or advice, because I don't know the basics of your case.

So here are some tips for quicker and more useful responses from me:

• Try to be accurate in what you tell me. Use the terms that HMRC have used in their correspondence, as there is a big difference between an Appeal and a Dispute, or a Penalty and an Overpayment, for example.
• Please tell me roughly how long you have already been disputing your Tax Credit overpayment, what HMRC have told you is the cause, anything you know about what led to the overpayment, and any other actions you have taken so far.
• Unless it's been over two weeks since you sent it, please don't re-send e-mails that you haven't had an answer to yet. I respond to ALL e-mails. Please understand that there is only one person answering the e-mails and it's not my 'job' or a 'proper office'. Instead, I do this voluntarily around my daily job and my family. I have to fit in what I can, when I can!
• Please don't ask for my advice if you also have another advisor, elsewhere, working on your behalf (unless you tell the other advisor to stop working on your case). Not only is that creating extra work for both advisors, it could confuse, and even harm, your case.

I know that Tax Credit overpayment is a complex and confusing mess, but the more information you give me to start with, the more useful and helpful my first response to you is going to be.

If you send me a 1-line e-mail saying "I have a Tax Credit overpayment, please help!", you are going to get back an e-mail with around 10 very obvious questions about two weeks later, rather than advice on any immediate action you can take.

This is because I can't recommend what course to take until I know the details of your situation. Conversely, you don't have to give me the entire history of the last few years, just anything relevant to what may have caused your Tax Credit overpayment.