That has all gone out of the window. We had an instance recently of a client who received letters from HMRC on 2 consecutive days, one advising that he owed no tax and the other that he owed in excess of £5k. After several very difficult telephone conversations with not very intelligent and rude HMRC employees (some of whom had little more than basic English) our tax specialist proved that 2 separate files for our client existed on HMRC's system.

I could quote many examples of gross incompetance and rudeness from HMRC employees.