Figures published by HMRC indicate that in the last financial year more than 10,000 people appealed demands for money issued by the UK Government. Of those, 5,881 had the decision overturned while a further 670 had it partially overturned.

In only 3,475 cases was it upheld.

In the year to April 2020, HMRC considered more than 20,000 challenges to its decisions of which almost half were upheld, compared with less than 35% this year.

The COVID-19 pandemic also had a significant effect on HMRC’s customer services. In the past year, more than half of calls about personal taxation took longer than 20 minutes to answer. For those using self-assessment, 70% of callers waiting for 20 minutes or more.

In the previous year, 7% of personal taxation calls and 9% of self-assessment calls were answered in more than 20 minutes.

People writing to HMRC had even longer waits. It took officials more than 40 working days to respond to a quarter of all correspondence, compared with 5% the year before, The Times reports.

A spokesperson from HMRC said “most rulings HMRC makes are right” and urged that the high rate of decisions being overturned was mainly related to penalties.

The spokesperson told Scottish Financial News: “These figures relate entirely to statutory reviews, most of which are against automated penalties and surcharges such as for self assessment late filing or VAT default surcharges. These types of automated decisions accompany high cancellation rates because once we’ve looked into the circumstances we are likely to accept a reasonable excuse.”