Been lied too............

A question about : Been lied too............

hubby has just taken a job after 7 years on the sick. We live in council property, so now you can guess that we have to pay rent. But he has 2 children from a previous marriage so the csa come in to it.
Hubby got a job contacted the csa helpline to enquire about payments and how much he would have to pay etc.
Well we were told by the helpline that he would have to pay 20% ( cause he has 2 kids 15% for 1st child then 5% for 2nd child) of his income. As he is on crap wages we were told that this amount would be Ј42 a week. We were happy with this, cause after csa, rent poll tax etc we just broke even. But for us it is better to be off benefits that to be on them.
But here lies the problem as he does a lot of travelling, so the company gave him 2 options.
1 - to take a company car (fiesta hubby is 6'3 not the best car) or take Ј200 a month towards your own car.
So we opted for the Ј200 a month towards our own car, as my mum bought us one which suited him.

Now the csa are saying that we have to pay a extra Ј44 a month out of the car allowance.

How can this be, hubby gets Ј200 a month then tax is taken off, then we have to pay business insurance, tax and put a months suply of petrol in ( he is sometimes doing 100 miles a day) that is not cheap.

We were advised by the csa help line that this Ј200 would not be taken into consideration. We were advised by a employee of the csa that this was not to be taken into consideration. this lady gave us a amount of Ј42 a week to pay csa. Hubby agreed this. he faxed the csa twice with wage slips and how he did not want to be in debt so he would pay x amount on certain dates.

We thought that this was going through, until last week when we got a call from the csa to say tha they now wanted a extra Ј44 a month of us, cause they wanted to take cash of the Ј200 a month car allowance. But should hubby had taken a company car they would not have taken this amount.

Now although we have this money in our bank at the beginning of the month it does not last, hubby is all over the northwest daily. we can't afford to pay out of this car allowance for the kids.
We had agreed a amount of Ј42 with a member of the csa, who know we have found out should not have agreed this with us.

hubby has now decided that if the csa come for the Ј53 a week he will not pay it. He will go back onto the dole, we live in rented council acommodation so rent and poll tax will be paid. No csa will be paid and he will get his dole and will have the same amount of money left as if he had to pay csa.

Why can't the csa see this, he just wants to get back to work and we thought that he had it sorted, especially when the amount was set at Ј42, but when they came for some of the car allowance it left us out of pocket.

We have been ill advised by the help line who told us that this amount ws for the car and not to be paid towards the kids and the actual csa who gave us a amount to pay. Then we were contacted by them to say that they have made a mistake. That is no good to us. Cause hubby would not have taken the job he would have stayed on the dole.

How wrong is this?

Best answers:

• Rater than loose a job, can he not negotaite with the company for a company car that is suitable for himself ?, explain the circumstances to them and they may be okay about doing it, and it owuld avoid the problem of the extra money.
• Well, I am certainly no expert, but the car allowance should surely be a benefit in kind, and not form part of his salary.
  It certainly does not seem right to me, but hopefully a more knowledgeable MSE`r will be along to put you right in a minute.
  Good luck
• From CSL109, Technical Guide Chapter 5 - Net weekly income. (PDF: 17KB)
  Payments for expenses are ignored provided they are wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred in carrying out the employment. (If they are tax free they will automatically be ignored.)
  So you need to find out if the Car Expenses are received tax free or if they are part of his taxable income. If they are Tax Free it looks like they should automatically be CSA ignored.
• I wondered where my taxes were going.
  Thanks for enlightening me.
• saint chris- I can't help you with your query re the CSA but just thought I'd mention this
  I assume you receive tax credits? If you do and you take the company car option, not only will you be taxed for the company car (ie you'll receive a lower net wage than someone on the same salary without company car) but you will ALSO have to add on your benefits in kind (company car) using form P11D onto husbands salary, which may give you a lower amount of tax credits.
  Best wishes
• If you take a car allowance from your employer instead of the company car then the CSA will treat this as part of your income. Your only argument against this could be that the car was exclusively used for work and for no other purpose and get it treated as an expense.
• I have sorted it out. I have contacted his ex-wife and i have explained it all. She had received 2 letters both with the different amounts. I explained that we don't have any cash left out of the car allowance, so we would be finding it hard to meet that payment. She was really nice about it. She is going to contact the csa just to make sure that is why the amount went up. And if this is the case. which it is. We have come to a agreement that she will cancell the account with the csa and we will pay the Ј42 which the csa agreed and she will not take anything of the car allowance that we get. There is also a backlog of payments at the csa and she would not receive any payment for a few months, even though we would be paying. As she is going on holiday soon i would imagine that she would want the money sooner than later. So we have decided to scrap the csa and we will pay her a cheque within the next few weeks for the past 6 weeks that we owe her. then if she give us her bank details we will set up a direct debit to pay the amount every 4 weeks.
  I'm so relieved that this is sorted out and that she agreed that the car allowance should not be taken into consideration.
  my main concern was that the csa helpline mis-informed us and more so a employee told us that this amount would not be included in the assessment.
  Feel better now also knowing that the money will be going to her direct from our bank than a 3rd party namely the rubbish csa.
• That's really good news!! I really wish we could all do without the CSA as sometimes they do more harm than good. I hope the new job goes ok.
• if the ex wife is on benefits she cant scrap the csa but if she isnt then yes she can tell them to take a run and jump
• Thanks for all the messages of support, especially Bossyboots.
  You would not believe what happened yesterday tea. After taking the bull by the horn and rining her and explaining our situation with the car allowance. She agreed that we should not pay on this amount as it is for car use. She said no problems we could sort it out ourselves. We will pay her all the arrears in the next week up to date. Then we will pay every 5 weeks on a direct debit in arrears. Which she agreed.
  Then lo and behold the CSA rang yesterday aft and said that after much discussion they have decided to back down and we don't have to pay csa on the car allowance. But our new payment would be Ј44 a week a increase of Ј2 a week.
  I explained that i had contacted his ex-wife and we were going to sort it out privately. he then pointed out the pit falls of this (like hubby stopping paying) now why would he do this when we are happy with the Ј42 a week and have been asking for giro payment slips for ages.
  he said that he would contact his ex-wife and explain to her all this and tell her the new amount. Well i started to panic cause it is a increase of Ј2 a week = Ј8 a month. Now this could make a difference.
  Next call was the CSA saying that she would have to think about it and will contact the CSA with her decission on Monday.
  This got us thinking is she going to change her mind and go thorugh the CSA for the extra Ј8.
  next move hubby rang her direct, and asked her outright had she changed her mind, and why did she not tell the fella from the CSA that she wanted them to cease any involvement. She said that the fella spent ages telling her how this could not work in her favour, we could stop payments, she could not get any money through his employer and we could move and she would not know where we would go.
  Basically he did everything to try and keep her on their books. She said that he was bugging her and she was busy cooking tea.
  Hubby assured her that he would send cheque, payments would be done on a direct payment through the bank. And he also said 'you should know me when we were married did i ever do anything like this with bills, no i always paid on time'
  I knew that she always knew this. When we previously paid csa before him being unempoyed for a few years we always paid weekly and on time. So she knows that.
  She also said that she was happy with the Ј42 and knew that she could get Ј44 but she could not be bothered waithing for the arrears that we owe to be paid. She will have a cheque of us at the end of next week.
  Phew i thought that the csa ringing could have thrown a spanner in the works, but as luck was on our side yesterday it worked in our favour.
  I think that the reason that the csa backed down is because i slaughtered them about one of their employees giving us false information, and let us agree weekly payments of Ј42 and contact the ex and tell her this. The other fella who told us that this was not the case car allowance is taxable.
  I slaughterd this employee and stated that she should not be doing that job if she is giving out wrong information. I also went into detail as to how we wanted to take this matter further and report her for giving out the wrong information. And how i was going to contact fathers 4 justice and my mp for advice. As we were misinformed by a employee who does not know their job.the fella told me that his boss would ring the next day.
  I think that this was the reason for backing down, as they did not want us to take this road and it could have caused distress for a employee.
  So now we are all sorted out and everything is fine.
  Just goes to show how things can work out.
• If you don't mind me saying, I think you're very lucky to have a responsible & reasonable husband and lucky to have a fairly reasonable husband's ex-wife too!. If only other couples could sort stuff out like this is a reasonable manner, for the benefit of all - especially the children in the middle of it all.
  [hope you didn't mind me saying]
• One thought. I didn't think a parent with custody could write off arrears to the CSA by leaving the CSA and going private. You might still owe the CSA money.
  Regards
  X