Thursday, May 17, 2007

A tax credit cock-up tale that got a little lost in the news

What with all the fun and games of the past week or so, one story that got lost underneath the swell of "when will he resign?" chatter was one about yet another cock-up with the tax credit system.

Apparently, HMRC managed to send out the bank details of its claimant to the wrong people. It was then forced to apologise and had to advise each person's bank to be vigilant toward identity theft. A dodgy printer that had printed 42,000 letters all with errors was blamed.

Should anyone wonder what it's like to be at the receiving end of the cock-ups that have dogged Gordon Brown policy failure (oh wait, he made Dawn Pruimarolo face the music over it, I forgot!), then I strongly suggest reading this blog, called "Tax Credit Fiasco - How a hardworking family is treated by an agency supposed to help them".

The person was overpaid credits,;went through hell trying to pay something back; then was told they were not eligible for tax credits anymore and didn't owe anything; then got sent £3.5K in cheques because they apparently owed "back payments"!

1 comment:

Neil Reddin said...

Gosh, these mischievious printers. I remember the good old days before when computer peripherals just did what you told them to, and mistakes were always ultimately down to the humans operating or designing the things.

Oh, wait ...