HMRC is demanding I pay £7,662 tax on my £79 earnings

The reader has been unemployed for most of the current tax year but is still being taxed. Photograph: Rawdon Wyatt/Alamy

HMRC has been taxing me for a job I do not have for almost three years.

In March 2020 I did a half day’s work for a charity, Move On, for which I was paid £79.10. I was put on the payroll in the expectation that I would do more work there in the future. Instead, the pandemic happened and I never returned.