The taxman's face went white. He seemed at a loss for words. After a long, uncomfortable pause, he stammered: "We have no procedure for this." He had seemed pleased to see me when I arrived. At the time, I was the BBC's economics correspondent, and he may have thought I had come to ask for his advice. So when I confessed instead that I had been fiddling my taxes by understating my freelance earnings, he was totally thrown.
He soon regained his equilibrium, however. "You are, of course," he said, almost apologetically, "guilty of fraud."
I was shocked by the word. I had never thought of myself as a fraudster, but I could hardly deny it. "We'll need to see your tax returns for the