Middle income families will lose out from plans to freeze elements of the tax credits.

An Exeter mother-of-four is facing a bleak Christmas after seeing a large part of her benefits snatched back by the taxman.

About 100,000 childminders are being warned off supporting false tax credit claims after the Inland Revenue prosecuted four people over a total tax loss of more than £24,000.

The Inland Revenue is clawing back cash from Ellesmere Port families whose child or work tax credits it says it's overpaid.

The Inland Revenue may have wasted £2bn of taxpayers' money in mistaken pay-outs of tax credits. The damning assessment comes from the National Audit Office, parliament's public spending watchdog, which on Wednesday put an official question mark over its accounts because of "unacceptably high" errors.

Thousands of families have had benefits reduced by up to a third because the Inland Revenue paid them too much, prompting Opposition MPs to accuse the Government of causing unnecessary distress to the low-paid.

The Inland Revenue has begun to pay out compensation to families that suffered delays in receiving their Child Tax Credit following the chaotic introduction of the new system.

The Inland Revenue will open a new call centre in Newcastle in the spring, employing more than 500 staff as it seeks to avoid a repeat of the tax credit fiasco that hit millions of people.

Industrial action could be launched by Inland Revenue staff if there is a repeat of the tax credits chaos that inflicted misery on hundreds of thousands of families earlier this year.

Gordon Brown announced increases in Child Tax Credit in his pre-Budget report but hundreds of thousands of families have yet to gain from a system described by one Labour MP as "hell on earth".

The Inland Revenue's annual accounts have been deemed unacceptable by the Government spending watchdog for the first time in the tax office's history. Requires free registration.