Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs is in a "massive mess", according to a whistleblower who will appear in a TV documentary this evening.
The whistleblower claims that letters are thrown away and staff have been directed to ignore mistakes unless they are specifically asked to investigate by taxpayers – all in an attempt to save time and ensure targets are met.
She says: "Staff have actually been told that when someone rings in with a tax inquiry and you spot a mistake on a person's record, you have to ignore it unless they have actually asked you to look at that mistake. It's all about the government target of answering so many calls in a day.
"If you write in, the post often goes missing. It just disappears, just gets binned. Some letters simply aren't seen by anyone.
"In the call centres you've often got hundreds of calls waiting, then it can suddenly change in seconds, to just say 15 waiting. People have simply given up, or been cut off. We've got little time to read up on any new tax guidance.
"And last week we had a situation where half a million payment reminder letters were sent out late, meaning people were being threatened with surcharges and penalties they might not even owe. It's a massive mess. It's very scary."
The programme, Taking On the Taxman: Tonight, shown on ITV1 at 8pm, includes an account from Robert Wailes, 63, from West Yorkshire, who was sent a series of letters claiming he owed increasing amounts of tax, culminating in a visit from a debt collection agency and demands for £15,000.
He later discovered that the Revenue actually owed him £800, and after complaining about his treatment he was offered £25 compensation.
The Revenue vehemently rejects many of the points made in the programme, and says that focusing on the problems of a few taxpayers is hardly representative when it deals with 60 million customer contacts a year.
A spokesman says it is ludicrous to claim that the Revenue would instruct its staff to ignore mistakes, and pointed out that anyone disposing of letters would be sacked. He says the Revenue did not use debt collectors, but adopts a "nuanced, calibrated approach" to helping those people who were struggling pay their tax.
He adds that although ITV had warned the Revenue in advance about the case studies, the department had not been told about the whistleblower and have not seen a preview of the programme.
The allegations may come as no surprise to millions of people who have filed tax returns and tried to pay the right amount of tax in the last few years.
Personally I have found the Revenue to be ruthlessly efficient: it spotted instantly when I should be fined £100 for failing to register as self-employed for a smidgeon of freelance work within a couple of weeks of completing it; and within a week of filing my online tax return this year it had written asking whether I wanted repayment of my 3p overpayment.
Maybe I am in a minority of one in wishing for a little less of that efficiency. What are your experiences of the Revenue? Have you benefitted from a Revenue oversight, or have you suffered from an unjust tax decision that is proving impossible to unravel?
