Family Tax and Where's my Refund??
 

Hi Uk Fam Tax are driving me nuts!
Firstly they send letter after letter to say our payments are suspended. Fine - afterall i did tell them we had emigrated.
Secondly lots more letters (of course my hubby gets the same letter too) saying they owe us 863.60 in pounds. Nice one plus we need the dosh.
Thirdly a phone call to them to say yes the figures were okay and that is all we had earnt so please send us the dosh to our Ozzy account. Their answer was yes that will be okay.
3 weeks later and no refund so another call to them and they say they cant pay to an Ozzy account so i found my sisters account in the UK (as mine is now closed). Rang them back again and gave it to them. 2 weeks later still no refund so another call to them. It is suspended so we will have to send a form to the Tax Office to get them to list suspension. 2 weeks later and another call to them only for them to say its still suspended and they will send me another letter to say what their next step is. Meanwhile i bang my head against a brick wall! I ask to speak to their supervisor and the answer is no you cant! Hows that for customer service?
Does anyone else have this problem and who can you complain to? Plus has anyone waved goodbye to a refund as it became too much hassle? I just wonder how much money belonging to people who have emigrated they have in HM bank account?
Heeeeelp:curse:
Georgina
ps i am posting this on Britvics too to see if anyone can advise on that site too

Re: Family Tax and Where's my Refund??
 

lots of people have trouble with HMRC tax credits. i'll see if i can find them.

Re: Family Tax and Where's my Refund??
 

Don't worry, in a few weeks you'll get two letters stating that you owe them money and can you send them a cheque asap.:rolleyes: Incompetent *******:curse:

Re: Family Tax and Where's my Refund??
 

Well Sparky where are they all!! Moneypen20 has obviously had problems with them though:)

Are we the only ones with an axe to grind??

Re: Family Tax and Where's my Refund??
 

I told them 3 months before we emigrated that we were going and gave them our forwarding address here. Got a letter to say payments suspended. Got another letter to say I owe them £550 and guess what - they're still paying money into my UK account??????

Guess if you can't get yours back - then neither can they......

Re: Family Tax and Where's my Refund??
 

Definitely not. Do a search on child benefit;)

Re: Family Tax and Where's my Refund??
 

Midget jan please save the money and dont spend it as you know as well as i do that they will ask for it back if its a mistake. You really need to ask them what they are playing at. What are they like!!! You could just keep sending their letters back saying not at this address and keep the money in the bank making interest til you eventually feel like paying it back as its only what they seem to do:mad:

Moneypen i did do a search before i posted originally but didnt really find what i was after as there were too many posts and it would have taken ages to go through them all! may have another gander later and see if anyone does know the answer to my original question.. someone MUST know

Still dont know how i will get my money. I am looking at it like its money i didnt have but i am still p...ed off about it.

Re: Family Tax and Where's my Refund??
 

Don`t hold your breath and expect it back in a couple of weeks - we put in our P85 for tax back in June and we finally got it end of September, they have a big backlog apparently and I would suspect the family tax people will be the same.;)

Re: Family Tax and Where's my Refund??
 

Thanks for that little glimmer of hope;)

They only need to press a button or two to pay some money into my account, how taxing can that be. They dont even need to verify anything as its all been done. All they need to do is unsuspend!!

I have already waited for 2 months i think i have been patient up til now.

Never mind ... does no one yet know who to take complaints to:confused:

If no one answers soon i shall ring them up again anonymously and ask them. I will let you know what the answer is.

Re: Family Tax and Where's my Refund??
 

Thanks for the advice. Their money is safely untouched waiting for their demands for return.

Good luck

Re: Family Tax and Where's my Refund??
 

Just a little bit of info I used to work for tax credits, If you phone and ask for a manager they are not allowed to say no and it is probably the adviser fobbing you off. There is an address for complaints and if you phone them by law they have to give you it and I believe complaints have to send an aknowledgment letter that they have received it within 10 days of getting it. If you tell them you are emigrating and they end your claim and they continue to pay money in then when they finally get round to sorting it every thing you received after the end date will be classed as an overpayment even though it was their fault that you received it. Your best bet to get any underpayment would be to wait till the end of the tax year when they will send out your renewal form and give them your total income for the 07/08 year and then they will make payments. I dont agree with the way tax credits are run as there has been so many mistakes. I hope this helps in some way.

Re: Family Tax and Where's my Refund??
 

Thank you Mark for your help.
I feel that i should not have needed to phone them this many times to get things sorted and it seems that if i hadn't phoned them then they would never have unsuspended my claim and it would be forever in their account and not mine. To be honest with you i think i should complain as i should never have been told they could pay it into an Australian account if they couldnt (that in itself left me waiting about 2 weeks to get onto them so i could have saved that in time had i known and given them my sisters account details straight away). Also at that time they should have unsuspended my account and not have me calling back to ask why i hadnt got the money yet (thats when they cottoned on that i wouldnt get it til it had been unsuspended).
It is poor service and it feels like they make up the rules as they go along! And even ex staff agree its not a good service so it must need sorting out.
Thanks again for your advice

Re: Family Tax and Where's my Refund??
 

Midget Jan
You are right to put it to one side but i wonder how long it would be before they couldnt actually ask for it back? Or is it because its Governenment they could ask for it back in say 10 years? Just a thought

Re: Family Tax and Where's my Refund??
 

yep, heard that quite a few times!!! The income tax people arent much better.... :thumbdown:

Re: Family Tax and Where's my Refund??
 

unfortunately it seems anything to do with tax things is a complete mess when it comes to people emigrating... you can try a complaint, I did when I kept getting letters telling me I was being taken to court for failing to pay tax I didnt even owe as I wasnt in the country at the time - it was basically just a fob off.

i think the best advice is take a deep breath, phone and ask for the manager as someone else has suggested or just wait. there really is no point getting wound up about it (as I did!!) as they dont give a sh*t. :thumbdown: