The number of “snitches” in Britain increased by 70% during the pandemic

His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has reported a 70% increase in citizen complaints against their companies over the past two years. According to Financial Times, this is primarily due to the two-year restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The tax service from April 2021 to April 2022 received 15 thousand complaints from the so-called official whistleblowers (English – whistleblowers), that is, employees or former employees who report violations or crimes in their companies. The year before, there were 13,600 such complaints, the year before the start of the pandemic – 8,900 complaints.

Experts interviewed by the Financial Times attribute the phenomenon to a rise in complaints about the fraudulent use of business support schemes introduced by HMRC since the start of the pandemic. Schemes such as the self-employed support program and the pandemic job retention program have cost the state £4.5bn.

“A combination of factors, from general outrage about scheme scams to personal employee dissatisfaction, has led to an increase in the number of employees who denounced their employers to the tax authorities on a scale never seen before,” Andrew Sakey, a partner at law firm Pinsent Masons, was quoted by the newspaper as saying. The tax service itself also played a certain role, which, firstly, opened up data on tax incentives received by companies, and, secondly, called for an increase in remuneration for complainants.

Last tax year, 38% of all complaints were so serious that they required further investigation by the tax authorities, according to HMRC. By data the service itself, last year it sent out 64,000 warnings to companies violating the rules of support programs during the pandemic. Thanks to this, 22 million pounds sterling was returned. According to the results of open 28 thousand investigations of cases of fraud, 204 million pounds were returned.

Andrey Kelekeyev