Recommendation 21

HMRC’s 2021–22 testing also found seven cases where taxpayers had been overcharged following the completion of a compliance enquiry, by a total of £32 million. Almost of all of this was a single large overcharge, which HMRC identified before any payment was taken.34 However, most of the smaller overcharges were for individuals or small businesses, who might therefore have struggled to pay had HMRC not identified the error and corrected the position.35 HMRC told us that it has controls in place to prevent over-recording of yield, and that its testing has found a slight improvement in the quality of its casework in the past year. However, it acknowledged that the seven overcharges it identified was too many.36