Treasury writes off £4.3bn in fraudulent Covid payments

The Treasury expects to recover only £1 of every £4 fraudulently claimed during the pandemic, writing off £4.3bn of the £5.8bn of taxpayer money stolen from emergency initiatives including the furlough scheme and the self-employed income support programme. The figures published by HMRC represent the first time the department has put a number on how much it expects its new £100m 1,265-strong anti-fraud taskforce to get back from Covid-19 fraudsters. HMRC spent £81.2bn on the schemes and believes £5.8bn has been stolen by workers and businesses claiming money they were not entitled to. It recovered £500m of overpayments in the 2020/21 tax year and expects its taskforce to get back between £800m and £1bn more by 2023.

 

The Times

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