Ms Ruth Kennedy:

Since we started receiving real-time payroll information, that is since 2019, we have made available to every PAYE taxpayer a preliminary end-of-year statement at the start of 2020 and every year following, which sets out the taxpayer's income tax and USC calculations for the year. In some instances there will be people who have overpaid tax during the year and in other instances there will be people who have underpaid tax. Some of the reasons they might have overpaid tax go back to the discussion we had about people who may be on emergency tax for too long. We make those calculations available to people. They can come in and file their returns and claim additional things like health expenses, as mentioned, or the remote working relief for people who worked at home during the pandemic. This year we took a very proactive step and wrote to more than 400,000 PAYE taxpayers, that is, we sent them paper letters outlining their preliminary position for 2019, 2020 and 2021 and invited them to come in to file and to claim their refunds. Interestingly, we got a much higher response rate to those letters from people we told owed us money. They came in and filed their tax returns. We got a lower response rate from those we told there was a refund there for them and they just needed to come in and claim it.