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HMRC recovers fraud payments.

 

The tax authority has almost halved the amount it expects to recover from fraudulent and erroneous claims on some of the government’s flagship Covid support schemes, including the furlough programme.

HMRC, which made payments to companies and individuals under the schemes, estimated £5.8bn last year was lost through fraud or error. Giving evidence to the House of Commons Treasury committee, Harra said one reason for reducing the amount expected to recover was a more significant number of smaller cases than predicted. «We initially estimated that we would take up 30,000 cases. It’s now approaching 50,000,» said Harra. He added that eat out to help out, which provided a meal subsidy to support the hospitality industry in 2020, had the highest proportion of fraudulent claims, estimated at 9.5 per cent.

Once the task force winds down in 2023, HMRC will absorb its efforts to recover losses due to fraud in the authority’s general compliance work. Harra said a lot of the tax evasion came from small businesses not declaring all their income. He added that HMRC’s new digital tax collection system should reduce taxpayer mistakes.

www.sba.tax

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  1. Amelia1 December 2022 at 14:26

    It was to be expected that some business owners would try and game the system. The system often tries gaming business owners so it all goes back and forth doesn't it?

    ReplyDelete

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