In a letter to the influential Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the chief executive of HMRC, John-Paul Marks (pictured), admitted a ‘historical error in the taxable state pension amounts used in some tax calculations’.

But the problem is not yet fully resolved and Marks told the PAC that HMRC ‘was working at pace to put in place a solution’.

However, the loss to taxpayers was small with an estimated £2.30 a tax year at most depending on which pension they were paid.

Marks said HMRC identified it had used an ‘incorrect state pension figure’ in PAYE end-of-year reconciliations, which ‘fed through into self-assessment pre-population information and simple assessment calculations’.

‘This