Senior sources at HM Revenue & Customs said that the likeliest outcome of the discussions over buy-to-let tax issues will not be a crackdown as widely predicted, but merely an information campaign.

The taxman is furious that a meeting held with practitioners to try and focus the attempts to improve compliance has been exploited for media coverage.

‘It was totally overblown. There’s a lot of anger,’ one source at the department said. ‘The accountancy profession had lambasted us for not consulting in the past. The story is we are sending leaflets out to landlords explaining their responsibilities.’