Up to 4.7 million taxpayers will be sent letters later this year telling them they paid too much, or too little, income tax in 2010-11. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) says the letters will follow its annual reconciliation exercise.

This checks that people have paid the right tax via the PAYE system.HMRC estimates that between 1.7 and 3.5 million people will be repaid an average of £340 each, while 1.2 million will owe £500-£600 each.

Last September, HMRC was severely criticised when it revealed that 5.7 million people had not paid the correct tax via PAYE for the years 2008-09 and 2009-10. This led to about 1.4 million people having to pay an extra £1,428 each on average, while about 900,000 taxpayers had their debts of up to £300 written off. Meanwhile 4.3 million people received cheques for overpayments.
Greater accuracy HMRC explained at the time that the large number of apparent errors had been uncovered by a new......More on this story: BBC News - More tax letters to come, HMRC says