Brown broke the law

One of the most humiliating experiences for me as a parent, in having to apply for the government's tax credits for working families. To top the off you also have the constant worry that as you have to use a "government computer" to calculator your "award", that you will be paid too much money and will end up oweing the tax man more than you can afford.

So it was with great delight to read in this morning's Times, that Gordon Brown now has to face the humiliating prospect of having to return hundreds of millions of pounds that has been reclaimed by HMRC, in overpaid tax credits.

His over complicated system scares people off. The forms are a nightmare, the helpdesk always seems to have someone that has no grasp of reality working on it when I phone up. Which leaves you with that nagging feeling, have they ballsed it up. But it's the system’s complexity explains why so many families fall foul of means-testing rules and frequently face repayment demands. Familes are supposed to tell HMRC when their circumstances change and hand back any overpayments. Although, in reality as I have found out the person you tell at the end of the phone doesn't seem to listen, so when you do receive your revised award it already wrong. Which I why I always query it. The problem is thousands of families don't as they simply assume that the taxman has listened and worked it out correctly.

However, the amount of times that the taxman causes problems, or the wrong box has been filled in on the extremely complicated forms result in the overpayments, and a subsequent investigaion by the the taxman. But according to the report HMRC Officials actually broke the law by failing to tell claimants that their tax credit awards were under investigation in the first place.

So as a result of breaking the law, HMRC now face the prospect of having to pay back the overpayments to the families that they took them off.

Now, why they couldn't have kept the old system of using you tax code, and letting you have the money as you got paid is beyond me. But thanks to Gordon wanting to take the money off you and letting you beg for it back, he has created a whole lot of issues. An inquiry into this whole fiasco is the least that the opposition parties should demand.