Taxman overpays employees by £12.6m over the past decade

Tax inspectors have overpaid themselves more than £12m in the past 10 years, The Telegraph can reveal.

Some 250 employees at HM Revenue and Customs were mistakenly overpaid by more than £ 1,000 last year alone.

In total HMRC admits its employees pocketed £12.6m over the past decade in erroneous overpayments that have to be clawed back by officials.

Figures obtained by this newspaper showed a total of £12.3m has been paid back by staff, leaving a £300,000 shortfall.

Last year, HMRC were overpaid to the tune of

£ 1.1m – with employees paying back just £900,000.

Many of the people who benefited from these extra payments were staff who left the organisation, but messages did not get through to payroll to halt their salary cheques.

HMRC then has to launch what can be expensive and time- consuming work to ensure that all the overpaid salary is either paid back or deducted from future payments.

Jonathan Eida, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers will be fuming that tax officials have been filling their pockets with more than they’re entitled to, even if it’s by accident.

“To overpay staff is a shocking error, but even worse is the fact that a lot of the cash hasn’t been clawed back.”

It comes amid mounting pressure on the tax office to reverse a decline in its customer service.

Earlier this year HMRC was forced into an about-turn on a plan to permanently close its helplines for six months to push more people into using online services. But after a public outcry, Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, ordered HMRC to pause the scheme.

Last month it was also revealed that HMRC failed to answer almost a million calls in January. Its figures showed that 841,945 calls were “not handled” in the first month of the year and that caller waiting times hit an average of 25 minutes.

An HMRC spokesman said: “With a staff headcount of almost 67,500, we operate at a monthly payroll average accuracy rate of 99.54pc, which exceeds the corporate benchmark of 98pc.

“Our total pay bill in the 2022- 23 financial year was £ 2.449bn, which means that 0.05pc was incorrectly paid that year, and we have recovered over 84pc of that.”

Matt Davis

Shortfall remaining after HMRC staff paid back £12.3m in erroneous overpayments