The NAO reported there was an increased risk from phoenix companies during the pandemic but found that HMRC did not hold data on the scale of phoenix activity (in terms of the number of companies or the financial value involved) and therefore could not monitor the changed risk. HMRC was not able to estimate the value of tax debt that was currently at risk.61 HMRC told us it didn’t think there was necessarily an increase in phoenix companies, but that the phoenix companies that did exist may embezzle larger sums.62 We do not see how it can be confident in this assessment without historic and current data.