Over 80,000 UK companies have voluntarily paid back more than £215 million in furlough scheme payments which they either claimed in error or did not need.
This was discovered by Press Association (PA) news agency by making a Freedom of Information (FOI) request which discovered that by September 15th, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) had received £215,756,121 from 80,433 businesses which paid back the tax office the money they claimed under the scheme. Up until the 16th of August, £35.4 billion had been paid out under the scheme.
HMRC said:
HMRC welcomes those employers who have voluntarily returned Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) grants to HMRC because they no longer need the grant, or have realised they’ve made errors and followed our guidance on putting things right.
At the time, Jim Harra, permanent secretary of the HMRC said:
We have made an assumption for the purposes of our planning that the error and fraud rate in this scheme could be between 5 per cent and 10 per cent. That will range from deliberate fraud through to error.
Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.
- Darius McQuaid
- Darius McQuaid
- Darius McQuaid
- Darius McQuaid
