Seeking comment: HMRC state pension tax refunds

I’m looking for tax, pensions and personal finance experts to comment on HMRC’s decision to automatically refund 3.2 million pensioners who were overtaxed on their state pension.

I’m particularly interested in calculating how much an individual pensioner could be owed in total if they were affected in every tax year from 2020-21 onwards, and how this varies depending on the size of their state pension and their marginal tax rate.

HMRC says the average refund is around £6 per person, but I’d like experts to explain what this figure means in practice and what a typical cumulative refund could look like over the six-year period.

I’d also like commentary on why some pensioners could be owed significantly more than the average, and whether higher-rate or additional-rate taxpayers are likely to see larger refunds.