It isn't just the ineptitude, it's the bloody arrogance. We all know that Revenue & Customs repeatedly loses confidential data. We heard the Public Accounts Committee last year savaging it for the “deplorable situation” that its bungling created for thousands on family credit. But there is something else, of which all this is a symptom: the Revenue despises us.

Revenue & Customs has a profound culture of disrespect for the individual. No wonder it cares so little about our privacy: it regards us as criminals. The VAT people — before the merger — were remarkably human, despite the absurdity of their work (much of the tax is circular — those we charge it to can claim it back). The Revenue are less pleasant. A very senior official, safely retired, told me: “They have two beliefs. One, that they own the tax system. Two, that everyone is on the fiddle. They're wrong.”

This institutional contempt is more corrosive as the working world changes. Governments applaud small businesses, freelances, contractors, flexible people who don't expect jobs for life. But anyone going into Schedule D self-employment should know what will happen: however scrupulously you state your income, however modest your expenses, the time will come when you are targeted for “inspection”.

You must not only restate your income, but produce and justify every private bank statement for years back (not easy to identify refunds, insurance payments or the friend who wrote you a cheque for her share of a holiday in 2002). You will get a “statement of assets” form, demanding in detail the value of your household goods and children's possessions on a date long ago. If you have lost any documents, God help you. In any case they will come at you with an imaginary figure of “culpable” debts and a large retrospective penalty.

Your accountant will argue it down (this is all about bargaining — they know you don't really owe it, but they have “targets”). However genuinely innocent you are, you will cave in, because admin costs are spiralling. It's protection money: the Revenue makes it clear that if you argue it will inspect other years and cost you thousands more. If you are too slow to pay it moves on to phone calls with threatening questions like: “Do you own your home?”

This will happen, O you budding entrepreneurs and freelances. It will distract you from your work, stop you sleeping, and fuel a sense of injustice and helplessness. And all the time, the clowns in Gateshead do far worse than mislay the odd invoice. They casually expose 25 million families to fraud and credit trouble.

They know you can't threaten them back: they're judge and jury, they hold the power. And they despise you.

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