Defending HMRC

Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs have been having a hard time of things recently over yet another foul up over the tax system. This time they took too much tax from 4 million people and not enough from 2 million.
Apparently they have a new system and worked out two years in one go and discovered all those that had slipped through the net.
My take is if you had been paying too much tax for the past 2 years, you obviously had not noticed otherwise you would have been on the telephone screaming at the Tax people to change it when you got your first pay packet 24 months ago. Greet the news as an unexpected bonus and spend it on something nice.
If you had not paid enough tax for the past 2 years then i'm glad that they have finally caught up with you and now you will be paying your fair share like the other 36 million of us. As the repayment is going to be spread over a couple of years and paid back through your tax code it is quite a good deal and if you owe less than £300, it is being scratched off anyway.
The problem seemed to be that employers and employees didn't inform the tax office of any changes so the codes never got amended so its a bit rich to be moaning at HMRC for not making the changes when they didn't know about them in the first place.
Nobody likes paying tax, i moan as much as anyone when my payslip arrives, but it is a necessary evil to allow the Government to keep things going and to quote Frankie Boyle, those Afghan wedding parties won't just blow themselves up.