According to research by The Telegraph via the TaxPayers' Alliance, in just the last year payrolling mistakes led to hundreds of HMRC employees being overpaid by over £1,000 - however, figures indicate this has been an issue for over the past decade.
The overpayments has resulted in a total of over £12 million incorrectly paid out to HMRC staff, and required an investigation to clawback and have the payments repaid. Though the payments made by mistake were successfully repaid, £300,000 remains outstanding.
One of the reasons given for the staff overpayments included payroll issuing salary payments to staff who were no longer employees of HMRC and had long left the government's tax collector. Other reasons could include delays in reporting things like maternity/paternity leave, sick leaves or breaks in contracts.
The Taxman responded to state that for their near £2.5 billion payroll bill, they have a near 100 percent payroll accuracy rate (99.54%) - exceeding the UK target of 98% - adding that they recovered 84 percent of the overpayments made through errors.