As well as handing over more of their hard-earned cash to HMRC, people risk fines and penalties for failing to pay tax they didn’t owe before. Even HMRC is struggling to keep up, as it has to tax more people with no extra resources to do so.

Getting through to its helplines is now an act of endurance, with service so bad that HMRC effectively threw in the towel and declared that it would shut them down for the summer, until forced to backtrack.

People might be more understanding if our public…