Reading Liberal Democrats

Reading East Liberal Democrat campaigner Gareth Epps has hit out at the government’s disgraceful tax credit record after the government published records showing they overpaid £3.4 million of tax credits in three years to 3,700 residents of Reading borough and wrongly paid out over £9 billion across the country.

At the same time they failed to pay over 1900 families in Reading borough the tax credit awards they were entitled to. This amounted to a massive underpayment of £1.3 million.

Commenting on the figures, Gareth Epps said,

“The government’s record on tax credits here in Reading is a disgrace. Gordon Brown has presided over a tax credits fiasco of entirely his own making.

“Not only have taxpayers in Reading and Woodley lost out, but the government is now trying to claw back money from people on very low incomes – even when it was government mistakes which led to the errors. It all adds up to a disgrace which, yet again, is a Labour policy hitting families on low incomes the hardest.

“The government has overpaid residents of Reading £3.4 million, and underpaid others £1.3 million.

“The government’s shambolic tax credit system leads to uncertainty for many families in Reading as they have no way of knowing what they will receive. I am campaigning for a simple system of fixed term awards of six months so that families know what they are getting and get what they are entitled to.”

Overpayments and Underpayments by local authority and constituency can be found here.

Nationally the government has overpaid £5.7billion in tax credits, but Liberal Democrat research also shows that the Government has incorrectly paid out around £3.6bn in fraud and error since 2003 – most of which will never be recovered. This means over £9bn has been paid in error, of which up to £5bn will be lost.