Incoherent

The National Audit Office recently reported that approximately 1.5M pensioners have overpaid around £250M in tax since 2002-3, as a result of discrepancies between HMRC records and tax deducted by employers and pension providers.

On the flip side of the coin, approximately 500,000 pensioners have underpaid approximately £103M of tax.

Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, has called on HMRC to provide a more coherent service:

"Older people want to pay the right amount of tax, but too many pay more than they need to because they do not claim allowances to which they are entitled and because of errors.

By providing a more coherent service, HMRC could make substantial savings as the number of enquiries from older people about their tax affairs would reduce - a win-win situation for all."

This situation is not entirely of HMRC's making, a large "dollop of blame pie" must be dished up to the government for creating such a complex and unwieldy tax system in the first place.

How on earth are people (taxpayers and those who work for HMRC, who are also taxpayers) meant to be au fait with this behemoth that they have created?

Tax does have to be taxing.

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