Pension scammers are appearing with impunity and few have ever been held to account, in accordance with trade physique The Pension Scams Business Group (PSIG).
The Authorities and HMRC should not doing sufficient to cease pension scams and help victims, in accordance 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 mentioned: “HMRC and the federal government additionally blamed the victims, however worse than that, they assumed that each one victims had been responsible of making an attempt to keep away from tax. That is removed from the reality.
“Odd folks don’t perceive complicated pension guidelines they usually definitely don’t affiliate pensions with tax, not to mention tax avoidance. Nonetheless, HMRC treats all of them as in the event that they had been responsible of dishonest the taxman.
“Due to this fact, on high of shedding most of their financial savings, HMRC has pursued them for tax expenses for over a decade; and has pursued them in an unnecessarily aggressive means. Now to be truthful to HMRC, their job is to gather tax that’s due. They are saying they haven’t any alternative, however it’s by no means affordable to bully and frighten folks and deal with them as criminals with none proof. It’s a case of when you’ve got a hammer, the whole lot seems to be like a nail.”
She known as on the Authorities to vary pension taxation legal guidelines to provide HMRC the ability to ‘disapply’ tax expenses in instances the place losses had been as a consequence of dishonesty by a 3rd occasion.
In her speech she mentioned PSIG have issues about suicides, bankruptcies, hardship and extreme welfare points amongst victims of pension scams as a consequence of HMRC’s deal with recovering tax from the taxpayer moderately than from the fraudsters.
The info, obtained by way of FOI requests, revealed there have been virtually 100,000 victims of funding fraud between 2020 and 2023.
The Pension Scams Business Group is a voluntary physique created by the pensions trade to assist share good follow and scale back the chance of scams by way of persistently utilized sensible due diligence and sharing info on real-time rip-off threats and traits.
