Fuming! Received letter regarding a potential over payment of Child Tax Credit as in receipt of Carers Allowance - all previously declared. Forty four minutes of intense anxiety on hold on the phone wondering how on earth I will pay it back with my limited level of income. After speaking to the HMRC operative, it's all ok but my stress levels went through the roof. I was physically shaking with anxiety. Obviously, paying what one owes is the right thing to do. After talking to the operative who said there were many other worried folks contacting HMRC as a result of receiving the same letters, sending out such letters en masse to double check, when folk have already complied with disclosure is wasteful in terms of the public purse, the operatives and the claimants time. As someone who also lives with the impact of chronic depression, it also has the potential to cause real psychological harm, as it has to me today. I am in bits now. I am in tears even though every thing is above board. And yet the current Tory government gets away with handing out and wasting billions of pounds of taxpayers' money in dodgy contracts to their donors and their cronies without consequence, yet it is those with the least resources to fight back that are instantly penalised if they make a mistake. How can that be right?
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Covid Realities
is a collaboration between the Universities of
York and Birmingham, and
Child Poverty Action Group. The project has been funded by the Nuffield Foundation
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