The Inland Revenue has decided not to bring in a special scheme to compensate people who have lost out because of the problematic introduction of the new tax credits.

They'll have to join everyone else with a tax complaint and follow the Revenue's official complaints procedure.

That might be a tall order because the tax office received 37,000 complaints last year on general tax matters alone. At present the Revenue is making no extra provision to deal with the increase of complaints from tax credit cases.

Counting the costs

At Working Lunch we've been swamped with letters from viewers telling us of their problems. Many viewers are already out of pocket.

Angela Poole has had to take out a loan at a very high rate of interest because her tax credit money has still not come through. A �200 loan is likely to cost her �80 over the year and she's racking up bank charges on top of this.

Maz Kelly reckons she's already �700 out of pocket because of delays in the payments. These costs range from loss of earnings, bank charges and travel costs too and from the tax office.

Soo: worse off

Soo Denton has had to use her overdraft, incurring costs and another viewer, Vanessa Davies has had to borrow money from her mother-in-law. And there's many more.

Making a claim

So what can you do if you feel you've lost out and want some sort of compensation?

The first thing to do is to check out what sort of thing you can claim for. Compensation can be awarded for postage, phone calls, travel and financial charges. So if you've had to arrange an overdraft, or you've incurred bank charges you could be entitled to some money back.

You can also claim for loss of earnings for the time you've spent on sorting out your benefit on the phone and visiting the tax office.

Tax Credit Compensation

Postage Phone calls Travel Fees Financial charges

The inland revenue will also compensate for cases of worry and distress. The amounts paid out in these instances can vary from �25 to �500.

A similar amount can be paid out if the IR agree that your complaint has been mishandled.

Of course payments for these sorts of claims are not automatic. The Revenue has told BBC News Online: "Each case will turn on its own facts."

Where families have not received the service they should expect then the Inland Revenue will consider how this can be rectified.

How to do it

Your first point of contact should be the representative you've been dealing with at your local tax office. As with most complaints procedures you should try to sort out the matter at a local level before going straight to the top.

If you get no joy then you can try the director of the tax office, failing that, there's an adjudicator, and as a last resort there's the parliamentary ombudsman