HMRC Seeks to Reclaim Bogus COVID-19 Support

1 year, 1 month ago by Oliver Atkinson

HMRC has paid out rewards of almost £400,000 to informants up to March 2021 as it seeks to clamp down on, and recover, fraudulent COVID-19 claims and increase tax receipts.

The government’s own report estimates that £5.8 billion of taxpayer cash was lost to “fraud and error in the scheme during 2020 to 2021” against a total payout of £81.2 billion. This means that roughly 7% of all support could be fraudulent.

Some companies, and individuals, have sought to abuse the support schemes with the BBC recently reporting on a recruitment company that claimed furlough whilst telling it’s employees to work.

HMRC says it stopped over 29,000 fraudulent claims and that the schemes “were designed to protect public money against error, fraud and abuse”.

HMRC has also announced the creation of a new ‘Taxpayer Prevention Taskforce’ with 1,256 staff dedicated to seeking out fraud in the schemes which it expects to recover between £800 million and £1 billion of taxpayer money.