Three months on the phone and still in the dark

Helene Hibbert has spent the past three months calling Inland Revenue helplines to find out how much she can expect to receive from the working tax credit and children's tax credit.

In the past fortnight the 39-year-old single mother from Bristol has called three or four times an hour. Yesterday she gave up trying to find out when she might receive the vital benefit payments and queued up at her local tax office to collect an emergency giro.

"It was lucky I had a few days' holiday this week so I had the time to go down there. I feel sorry for people who are working and can't do that," she said.

Ms Hibbert, who works as a property manager, earning around £14,000 a year, received her last payment from the old working families' tax credit and child tax credit last month in her building society account.

She was expecting to receive weekly payments from the new tax credits, but when she asked her building society what had happened to her money, it said the cash had been returned to the Inland Revenue.

"The revenue had left out the last three digits of my account number and my name," Ms Hibbert said.

"The building society had already returned the money by the time I found out. I tried calling the revenue to get the payment sent again, but I couldn't get through. Once I waited 45 minutes."

Not only has she spent hours on the phone trying to contact revenue staff, she is also a loser under the new rules - though she is not sure by how much.

"I have no idea what I'm going to get or when I am going to receive it," she said.

"I've been on to my MP, but they said they didn't know anything about it. The whole system is hopeless."

Ms Hibbert has been told that rule changes in the working tax credit mean that the the value of her car is included for the first time in the calculation. The car has been valued at about £4,000, taking her income, for the purpose of calculating benefits, to £18,000. The cut off point for working tax credit is an income of about £14,000.

"It means I don't qualify [for working tax credit] and will lose £25 a week compared to the old working families' tax credit. I should be able to handle that, but it will be hard because it means I can't claim things like free prescriptions for my two daughters."