Rarely have I stumbled across a greater untruth than HM Revenue & Customs’ catchy advertising slogan “tax doesn’t have to be taxing”.

Anyone who has filled out a self-assessment tax return or tried to work out their future tax bills is likely to have found it very taxing.

It seems that now even HMRC is finding the tax system too difficult to navigate. Successive governments have made significant changes to the regime in recent years, and it looks like the taxman just can’t keep up.

The introduction of the dividend allowance and personal savings allowance, as well as increasing the personal allowance and changes to National Insurance are just some of the shifts in the past couple of years.

Last week HMRC admitted it was struggling to properly calculate how the dividend allowance applies to some individuals’ taxes.

Launched in April 2016, the dividend allowance permits individuals to earn up to £5,000 in dividend income before they face tax. We are now seeing the first tax returns being filled out for the 2016-17 tax year (relax, these are not due until January 2018) – and it’s not been smooth sailing.

Software glitches at HMRC are being blamed for the fact that the system cannot correctly work out how the dividend allowance, the personal savings allowance (a tax-free limit for savings income) and the tax-free personal allowance all fit together.