Covid fraud task force ‘not best value’ for UK taxpayers, admits HMRC HMRC will be closing its Taxpayer Protection Taskforce, set up in 2021 to recover billions lost through COVID-19 financial aid schemes, saying keeping it open “does not provide the best value for the taxpayer”. It is believed that £4.5bn was misallocated by HMRC over the lifetime of the support schemes. The taskforce will be wound down from March 2023 and by September its COVID-19 fraud work will be absorbed into wider compliance activity, boss Jim Harra said in a letter to the Treasury. Mr Harra wrote in the letter: “We remain committed to tackling error and fraud in the COVID-19 support schemes where this is the most cost-effective use of resources, and we are not writing anything off.” A spokesman for HMRC said: “Tackling Covid scheme fraudsters remains extremely important to HMRC, and moving this work into business-as-usual compliance activity is the most efficient way to ensure we continue to protect and recover taxpayers’ money in the longer term.”
Many of our motorsport clients tell us that they have come across numerous examples of suspected COVID fraud in their business dealings and that it is far more diespread than HMRC believe.