Lawyers are calling for the UK’s tax authority to expand its whistleblower rewards scheme as new figures show that HMRC paid out over 500,000 to people blowing the whistle on tax fraud.
HMRC has paid out over 509,000 to individuals providing evidence about tax fraud during the course of the last financial year, up from 495,000 the previous year.
The most recent figures are 75 per cent more than the 290,000 paid five years ago, according to research by law firm RPC.
Adam Craggs, the head of RPC’s Tax, Financial Crime and Regulatory team, said the scheme should be more widely publicised and expanded to encourage more people to report suspected wrongdoing.
“More individuals with evidence of serious tax fraud would come forward if they knew they could be in line for a life-changing amount of money,” Craggs said.
“Paying a proportionate amount for high-quality information that helps secure criminal convictions and the recovery of substantial amounts for the Exchequer would be a sensible step,” he said.
Michelle Sloane, another partner at RPC, added: “HMRC should increase the incentive and transparency it uses when it comes to whistleblowers.”
By comparison, the US Internal Revenue Service pays whistleblowers between 15 to 30 per cent of the additional tax collected from probes initiated on the basis of a whistleblower report, and paid out $37.8m to 132 tax whistleblowers in 2022.
The UK policy has technically been in place since 2005, after the ability to hand out financial...
Police have launched an investigation into alleged false accusation by Park Cheol-min, a former member of the Seongnam International Mafia. Park, ahead of the 2022 presidential election, raised al...