By Tim Richardson for The
Register.
This article has been reproduced with permission.
The fines of up to £400 were dished out during 2004/05 and
concerned the completion of tax forms.
But documents leaked to Computer Weekly revealed that a
"basic flaw in the design of automatic systems" led to the wrongful
issue of penalty notices.
The HMRC documents said: "We would like to apologise to
employers and affected agents for the inconvenience undoubtedly
caused by an error in our systems. We recently discovered that
approximately 10,000 employers received penalty notices for 2004-05
although no penalty is due. This came to light because of the
welcome increase in online filing."
In a statement, HMRC told El Reg it "very much regrets
any inconvenience caused".
"We are putting measures in place to prevent these problems
arising again. No customer will be faced with paying more tax than
is due or paying any penalty issued in error," it said.
But insiders are concerned this is yet further evidence that
HMRC is unable to keep up with the scale and complexity of the UK's
tax system.
Last week it emerged that crooks had made off with at least £15m
after defrauding the tax credit system by making false claims in
the name of job centre workers. The £15m estimate came when HMRC
executive director, David Varney, appeared before the House of
Commons Public Accounts Committee last Thursday.
He was there to answer questions from MPs about an attack on the
revenue, which forced HMRC to shut down its tax credit portal
website at the start of December after uncovering an attempt to
defraud the system using the identities of Department of Work &
Pensions staff.
© The Register
2006
