Monday 12 March 2012

Communications Confusion



Child tax credits continue to cause confusion, not just for the recipients but also for HMRC.

The Telegraph reports that HMRC sent out letters last month to recipients of child tax credits, stating that the maximum income for a family to be eligible for the benefit will be £26K as from April 6. The letters warned that child tax credit would end for families with income above £26K, unless they got in touch with the HMRC:

"For Child Tax Credit the income limit is £26,000 for both single and joint households."

Whilst this is correct for a household with one child, it is not correct for households with more than one child; families with two children will be entitled to credits, if their annual income is less than around £32,200.

HMRC have admitted that the letters were not that clear, and are quoted:

"We accept that a recent letter sent out to some tax credits claimants was not as clear as it could have been. 

We apologise if any confusion has been caused."


What was it  Mark Holden (the RTI Programme Director) said recently (granted he was referring to RTI, not something as "mundane" as tax credits)?

"...so the real thing for us is making sure the communications are clear, making sure the guidance we are publishing is in plain English..."

Tax does have to be taxing.

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4 comments:

  1. Absolutely typical. Just like getting three different answers to the same question if one calls the telephone contact centre with a general query. Fortunately, being a tax professional, I have some idea of what the answer may be. The poor public, not only do they have to wait typically more than 30 mins to be answered (at their expense) but the information they are given is quite likely to be fundamentally wrong.

    I wish they would put a panel of tax professionals and the public at the front line to test and then repair the system.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice idea and I agree with you completely. The bad news is it won't happen... it costs too much :(

    ReplyDelete
  3. I left HMRC 30 months ago. Is it still a shambles? When they start promoting intelligent, helpful people to team leader status instead of semi-literate bullies it will be a step, a small step, in the right direction.

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  4. Well as i've said before on this site you'll get the service you pay for, If you half an oganisations staff, reduce costs on training and bring in half baked schemes like pacesetter and lean what can you expect?.I didn't see many comments on this site about the job cuts over the last few years.
    Now you moan, well guess what it's going to get worse.

    ReplyDelete