HMRC to shut down Covid fraud taskforce HMRC is to begin winding down its Taxpayer Protection Taskforce from March next year with the view to having it completely closed down by September. The specialist team of 1,250 officials was working to recover the billions lost to fraud and error through pandemic relief measures. Labour's shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “Not only did [the Government] fail on basic checks that were meant to stop this kind of criminal loss happening, but they seem to be giving up altogether on clawing any of it back from fraudsters by winding down this task force.” However, HMRC insisted: “We certainly will not be stopping doing compliance work on Covid error and fraud. We will continue doing that, although the dedicated taskforce will no longer be organised in that way. We will continue picking up those risks as part of our business-as-usual compliance work.” Covid fraud has been widespread in our experience.