Reeves will provide a US-style whistleblowing fee for HMRC

Monday 10 November 2025 12:42

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Chancellor Rachel Reeves will reveal a US-style whistleblower scheme to combat large-scale tax fraud.

By the end of this month, HMRC is expected to launch a reward scheme, according to the Financial Times, which could pay informants 30 per cent of the tax collected from the information provided.

This new incentive program like the United States will be the first in the UK, because the UK’s traditional approach to whistleblowing is that the public must report violations without any monetary incentives.

The latest estimates are that tax avoidance in the UK will reach £5.5 billion by 2022-2023, but as the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) suggests, this figure may be “just the tip of the iceberg”.

The Treasury has also lost £47 billion over the 2023-24 tax year due to unpaid tax.

As Reeves has a fiscal hole to fill, he is expected to use his Autumn Budget speech to outline the new tools HMRC is using to tackle unpaid tax.

Focus on closing the tax gap

The new scheme will target higher-value tax fraud and is expected to improve the government’s law enforcement capabilities.

This comes after the tax agency paid out almost £1 million in tax fraud tips during 2023/24, 92 per cent more than the £508,500 paid out in 2022/23.

HMRC has also increased its raids over the years, after data showed it carried out 458 raids (April 2021 – March 2022), 623 raids (April 2022 – March 2023) and 648 raids (April 2023 – March 2024).

The increase in activity from HMRC comes as Labor pushes the ‘Closing the Tax Gap’ initiative.

HMRC was not the only body open to adopting a US-style approach to paying whistleblowers, as Nick Ephgrave, director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) at the time, was very open to the idea when he took on the role.

“If you look at the example in the US, their system allows for that, and I think 86 percent of the $2.2 billion in civil settlements and decisions made by the US Department of Justice were based on whistleblower information,” Ephgrave said in February 2024.

This comes as fraud losses reach £629 million in the first half of 2025, according to trade body UK Finance, as AI enables criminals to carry out more sophisticated fraud.