The main cause of error and fraud on CJRS was furlough paid to employers for employees who were still working. HMRC recognised at the start of CJRS in spring 2020 that there was a high risk that employers would exploit the scheme by claiming furlough for employees that continued to work. HMRC accepted that it could not prevent such claims and it intended to recover sums through post-payment compliance activity. HMRC’s estimates indicated that £2.3 billion was paid to employers for periods when employees were working. HMRC began deploying significant numbers of staff to its post- payment compliance activities to recover overpayments from October 2020. By March 2022, HMRC’s compliance work targeting employers who claimed furlough for working 21 Q 50; HMRC, Annual Report and Accounts 2021 to 2022, HC 494, 18 July 2022 22 HMRC, Error and fraud in the COVID-19 schemes: methodology and approach (an update for 2022), 18 July 2022, Table A1 and Table A2, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/measuring-error-and-fraud-in-the-covid- 19-schemes/error-and-fraud-in-the-covid-19-schemes-methodology-and-approach-an-update-for-2022 (accessed 2 December 2022) 23 Public Accounts Committee, Fraud and Error, Ninth Report of Session 2021–22, HC 253, 30 June 2021 24 Qq 58–59, 81 25 CES0002, Cifas, paras 4, 6–8, published 17 November 2022 26 CES0001, Chartered Institute of Taxation, paras 5.20 to 5.22, published 17 November 2022 COVID employment support schemes 13 employees had closed 254 cases and had yielded only £640,000.27 We asked HMRC why it had found so few cases. It told us that it could identify working while furlough at the ‘extremes’, for example, where it could find evidence of economic activity by an employer that claimed to have furloughed 100% of their staff for 100% of the time. However, for most stages of CJRS, when furloughed employees could legitimately work part time, HMRC said it was difficult for its staff to determine whether people were working at times when t