Possible Furlough Fraud

[Watermelons29]

My friend's employer is paying her less due to reduced hours but they are on the Government furlough list. I obviously have too much free time in lockdown!

If you suspected someone else's employer was claiming flexible / part furlough for them, but not paying them, would you say anything or should I mind my own business?

Sorry should have all they can do is take total gross on furlough claim and compare it to total gross on rti

I think we might slightly at crossed purposes as I think in this situation it is unlikely the employer will be claiming furlough for the the additional hours and just not including them on the payslip. What I’m more trying to explain is that hmrc cjrs would never pick this up unless an enquiry was opened in which case it would be blatantly obvious.

My gut feel is that in this particular situation the employee prob isn’t commiting fraud but it would be done, there aren’t the checks in the system to spot it.

I have clients that have similar situations in the payroll where they have employees on short time but then May have one or two on full furlough so they appear on the governments furlough list. The reason they aren’t using flexible furlough was initially because flexible furlough was on,y available to employees that had previously been furloughed so they didn’t think it was fair as they would end up with some of the employees on short time being topped up and some not. More recently some companies have chosen just to pay short time as the company has to incur the ers ni and er’s pension so there is a cost to the company

Perhaps they have furloughed some staff but not all

It’s pretty common to do that

I'd report furlough fraud just the same as I'd report tax evasion and benefit fraud - at the end of the day it affects us all. Tax paid needs to go to the right areas and to people in need