Overclaimed Furlough Funding

Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme

According to Jim Harra, the First Permanent Secretary and Chief Executive of HMRC, there is more than £3.5bn of overclaimed furlough funding.  He estimates that claims in error or fraudulent claims may total up to 10% of cases.  HMRC is clamping down hard and looking at 27,000 active cases.

In July 2020 HMRC made its first arrests in connection with a suspected £495,000 case of furlough fraud.  This week has seen further activity and HMRC is writing to 3,000 businesses per week that it suspects have claimed too much under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS ).

If you think you may have made an error in a CJRS claim, Alterledger can check the details and make sure you stay on the right side of HMRC.  Any overpaid furlough funding should be repaid to HMRC and you’ll need to notify it by the latest of either;

1. 90 days after the date you received the grant you were not entitled to
2. 90 days after the date you received the grant that you were no longer entitled to keep because your circumstances changed
3. 20 October 2020

There is still plenty of time before the 20th October at the time of writing, so if the first two deadlines have elapsed, you still have time to resolve everything.

How do I report overclaimed furlough funding?

If you’ve overclaimed through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, you can either:

• correct it in your next claim
• make a payment to HMRC as soon as possible (only if you’re not making another claim)

What you’ll need

You’ll need your 14 or 15 digit payment reference number that begins with X.  You will need to contact HMRC to get your payment reference number.  Alterledger can help you with the process and allow you get on with your business while we sort everything out with HMRC.