The taxpayer protection taskforce is set to recover around £1.1bn in funds lost to fraud from covid before winding down in March 2023, amounting to just a quarter of HMRC’s fraud and error estimate. The investigation activities will be moved to the regular compliance team by September.

An estimated £4.5bn was claimed through fraud and error across the full lifecycle of the three support schemes administered by HMRC, between 2020 and 2022.

In 2021, the government announced an investment of over £100m in a taxpayer protection taskforce, which recovered more than £226m in preventable error and fraud. By the end of March 2022, nearly 41,000 compliance interventions had been opened.

However, according to Jim Harra, HMRC chief executive, the taskforce has provided ‘little value’ for taxpayers.

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