They say that tax rebates due to tax payers can be delayed by more than a year and this can sometimes be even after the refund has actually been approved.
One of the reasons why the UK tax payer is often due a repayment is that the tax office does not have the time, the manpower or the inclination to check to see if tax payers are actually due a refund.
It is estimated that the Inland Revenue are hanging on to millions of pounds in unpaid refunds owed to tax payers.
There are refunds due to all kinds of tax payers for example individuals in respect of self assessment tax returns and those who are taxed under PAYE and who very often do not receive a tax return.
Quite often PAYE (pay as you earn) codes can be wrong for various reasons and recently the Inland Revenue admitted that millions of codes were incorrect.
Even when you can get them on the telephone they often say "I see you rang last month to change your code and we agreed it should be changed,however,for some reason it does not seem to have been put though our system"! You should know that when a code is changed as the Inland Revenue sends the employee a copy at the very same time as they notify the employer.
However with some very large employers and pension payers the Inland Revenue can get access to the employers' payroll system so they can update the PAYE codes automatically.
It is not just those who are in employment or the self employed who are due tax reclaims but there are monies outstanding for capital taxes and company taxes as well.
The individual value of refunds which are held up or delayed vary between £100 and can be in excess of £100,000.
The average PAYE refund that is due to employees is in the region of £1,300 but this amount varies from taxpayer to tax payer depending on their circumstances.
These are very substantial amounts of money and in some cases these amounts have been outstanding for more than 12 months.
It is not just tax payers who are fed up as employees of the Inland Revenue find themselves coming under pressure from the public Apparently in one survey the staff had given the Inland Revenue management a confidence vote of only 14%.
A report by the National Audit Office which was published in January 2010 reported that 43% of incoming telephone calls representing some 40 million enquiries were left unanswered.
Whilst this may be a very large organization this is still no excuse for poor performance.
My experience has been much better than this but you can often be holding on for 10 or 15 minutes and although you ring one number your call is answered at different locations over the country.
It is in fact more or less impossible to speak to somebody from your actual tax office.
So if your PAYE tax office is in Edinburgh (as many are) but the phone gets answered in Bradford, Manchester or in Wales.
So the person you speak to will then email your tax office in Edinburgh and they action your inquiry the following day.
My experience of this is that you have to call again to make sure it has really been dealt with.
Morale of the staff has dropped in the last few months with the very considerable extra burden of trying to resolve millions of errors.
in computer issued PAYE coding.
Another reason why morale in the tax office is low is that there is a threat of redundancy hanging over all of them as the revenue is trying to reduce its costs at call centre's by some 30% by the year 2012.
Members of Parliament on the treasury select committee which was chaired by John McFall were critical of the management of the tax office.
In a report the select committee said that the performance at HMRC remains mixed with considerable room for improvement and considerable challenges remain to be overcome if HMRC is to achieve this improvement.