HMRC has published a statement of explanation for a recent blunder. Yourselves, your employer, or your clients may well have received multiple, or incorrect, notices of a tax-code change this year.
HMRC has begun using a new National Insurance and PAYE system to consolidate customers' records and automatically issue coding notices, with the aim of ensuring all tax codes are accurate. The problem arose, however, when rogue coding notices started to be received.
HMRC had this to say,
"The transition to the new system has brought to light discrepancies in our existing records and this is resulting in a number of incorrect notices being issued. The vast majority of notices will be correct but there will be cases where, because the data carried over from our old systems does not match employers’ data, some people receive an incorrect coding notice or more than one coding notice for the same employment because of these discrepancies.
"This is a transitional issue caused by data mismatches, rather than an IT issue and will be resolved once we have cleared these from the system.
"We are aware of the issue and apologise for any inconvenience caused."
HMRC assures us that all necessary steps are being taken to ensure that all codes are corrected and nobody will overpay tax when the new tax year starts in April 2010.