By Tony Booth

The Inland Revenue is at it again - now they admit to scouring the newspapers for letting advertisements to see whether landlords have registered their income.

I am beginning to wonder whether HMRC have been acquiring additional personnel via MI5, given various recently published reports on how they have been trying to identify and investigate the tax status of buy-to-let investors in the UK.

I mentioned recently that HMRC had been surreptitiously using the new tenancy deposit protection scheme to gather information on landlords, despite the fact the procurement of personal data through such methods is at best inappropriate and underhand.

Now the Sunday Times has revealed that Revenue officials have been furtively collecting information using a new computer system that trawls letting advertisements.