'Are you by any chance due for a visit from the tax man or the VAT inspector in the near future?'

At this point the VAT inspector did arrive, a man in his early twenties by the look of him, carrying a briefcase.

VAT inspectors will visit registered businesses periodically to ensure that accurate records have been maintained and proper returns made.

'Don't tell me there aren't a few VAT inspectors twiddling their thumbs,' Rebus had heard him say.

Other union chiefs warned the Government could lose millions of pounds by axing the jobs of 300 VAT inspectors.

Routine control visits by VAT inspectors frequently raise queries on businesses' VAT returns.

The offices of Mid Sussex Waterways were in his house and he was awaiting the visit of the VAT inspector.

"We came across an HM Revenue & Customs stand at an exhibition where we chatted to the VAT inspector who agreed to come and visit us.

The Fraud Squad found plenty to interest them in Wheatley's office, and it looked as if the Inland Revenue and the VAT inspector would also be having words with him.

According to his sources, confidential information sold to newspapers may have been obtained through blagging, burglaries, bribery, and blackmail, sometimes involving corrupt customs officers, VAT inspectors, bank employees and police officers.

This walk, by the way, although it's only short, does involve a bit of scrambling which, though hardly dangerous, does need a fair amount of agility - fit grannies and grandads would make it, overweight VAT inspectors with beer bellies wouldn't.

Ernst & Young fielded a former Inland Revenue Inspector of Taxes and a former VAT inspector - gamekeepers turned poacher as it were- to talk about the changes brought about by the Single Market to the regulations governing direct taxation and VAT.

From the 1990s, private investigator Jonathan Rees reportedly bought information from former and serving police officers, Customs officers, a VAT inspector, bank employees, burglars, and from blaggers who would telephone the Inland Revenue, the DVLA, banks and phone companies, deceiving them into providing confidential information.