A WHISTLEBLOWING tax inspector has told a tribunal how businessmen were being deliberately over-taxed so his colleagues could boost their pay packets.

Alun Curtis, right, from Yarnton, said HM Revenue and Customs unfairly charged traders too much tax to make it look as if they had successfully solved cases and deserved performance-related pay.

The 55-year-old was using Public Interest Disclosure legislation to lift the lid on how colleagues had sought additional money obtained from their inquires into traders tax returns.

The tax inspector, who has worked for the HMRC since February 1979, believed there was potentially “hundreds of thousands of pounds” which had been illicitly extracted from unsuspecting businessmen.

Mr Curtis, who made his claims at an employment tribunal in Reading, said he viewed the practice as a criminal offence.

He told the panel the reason case workers aimed for a high tax results was to gain a “top rating” in their development evaluations, so that they were entitled to a pay increase.

Mr Curtis, from Merton Way, in Yarnton, said that he had taken his concerns to bosses in the HMRC, but believed his speaking out led to him being vilified since he first made the allegations in 2008 and 2009. Mr Curtis was based at Trinity House in Oxford. The case, expected to last four days in front of Judge Robin Lewis, continues.