Pension scammers are performing with impunity and few have ever been held to account, in keeping with business physique The Pension Scams Business Group (PSIG).
The Authorities and HMRC usually are not doing sufficient to cease pension scams and help victims, in keeping with Margaret Snowdon, Chair of the PSIG.
She claimed in a speech outdoors Downing Avenue yesterday that HMRC and the Authorities have acted like bullies of their remedy of pension rip-off victims.
She stated: “HMRC and the federal government additionally blamed the victims, however worse than that, they assumed that each one victims have been responsible of making an attempt to keep away from tax. That is removed from the reality.
“Peculiar individuals don’t perceive complicated pension guidelines and so they actually don’t affiliate pensions with tax, not to mention tax avoidance. Nonetheless, HMRC treats all of them as in the event that they have been responsible of dishonest the taxman.
“Subsequently, on high of shedding most of their financial savings, HMRC has pursued them for tax fees for over a decade; and has pursued them in an unnecessarily aggressive method. Now to be honest to HMRC, their job is to gather tax that’s due. They are saying they don’t have any alternative, however it’s by no means cheap to bully and frighten individuals and deal with them as criminals with none proof. It’s a case of when you’ve got a hammer, all the pieces seems to be like a nail.”
She known as on the Authorities to alter pension taxation legal guidelines to offer HMRC the facility to ‘disapply’ tax fees in instances the place losses have been resulting from dishonesty by a 3rd get together.
In her speech she stated PSIG have considerations about suicides, bankruptcies, hardship and extreme welfare points amongst victims of pension scams resulting from HMRC’s deal with recovering tax from the taxpayer reasonably than from the fraudsters.
The info, obtained by way of FOI requests, revealed there have been nearly 100,000 victims of funding fraud between 2020 and 2023.
The Pension Scams Business Group is a voluntary physique created by the pensions business to assist share good observe and scale back the danger of scams by way of persistently utilized sensible due diligence and sharing data on real-time rip-off threats and tendencies.
