We were interested, yet not surprised to read in the Daily Telegraph last week about traders being “deliberately overtaxed”.

The issue has been highlighted in a recent employment tribunal where a tax inspector told how businessmen were deliberately overtaxed so that colleagues would look  as if they had solved cases and deserved performance related pay.

Using public interest disclosure legislation, the inspector claimed that colleagues “conspired not to carry out their legal duty to correctly assess a trader on his trading profits”, thus working against the Civil Service Code of conduct.

From our own experiences of working for HMRC, we have always been aware that this ”yield” was used as a performance indicator, so our advice would always be check, check & check again you are not being overcharged tax otherwise the taxman could be getting an extra bonus!