Amount of people affected by HMRC blunder still unclear

HMRC

HMRC have revealed that there could still be more people caught up in the computer system error that led to millions being given the wrong tax codes.

Previously a number of 6 million affected people was given, but HMRC have now said that figure was an estimate, and that it could increase in the next few months.

Earlier this week Dame Lesley Strathie, HMRC chief executive, spoke to the Public Accounts Committee, where she was challenged about a possible ten million more cases. She claimed that “Until we work each of those cases, we won’t know the absolute numbers.”

Ominously, Dame Lesley warned that there could be more mistakes on the horizon, “It’ll take us another year after that before it’s a stable system,” she said of the computer system that created the initial mistakes.

When asked why it took HMRC so long to alert the public about the delay Dame Lesley said: “We would have raised everyone’s anxiety. We wouldn’t be able to deal with the volumes on our telephone lines, I’m not sure it would have been helpful.”