Treasury: Tax write-off for two million
Nearly two million people who have underpaid income tax are having the amount they owe written off, it emerged yesterday.
HM Revenue & Customs is cancelling tax debts for 1.9 million people who paid the wrong amount of tax during 2006-07 because of issues with the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system, according to the Sun newspaper.
In theory the total amount of income tax being written off could be as high as 500m, although a Treasury spokesman said in reality it was likely to be much lower than this, partly because anyone owing less than 50 automatically has their debt cancelled.
He added that the Revenue and Customs had estimated that if they did pursue the outstanding sums they would only recoup around 30m.