Start-up Companies: Tax Incentives

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I hear what the noble Lord is saying and I will very happily look at the evidence that he has provided to officials in the Treasury. Perhaps he would like to join the meeting with my noble friend Lord Leigh.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, in January the National Audit Office reported that error and fraud in SME research and development tax credits had increased to 24.4% or £1.04 billion. It added:

“There are too many examples where these reliefs either do not achieve their economic objectives or are subject to significant error and fraud costing the Exchequer billions of pounds”.


Can the Minister explain why the Government have failed to monitor benefits of tax reliefs?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The Government have actually monitored the benefits of the tax reliefs and indeed published independent reports at the 2023 Autumn Statement into EIS and SEIS. We have also published annual reports into R&D on whether the schemes are appropriately designed. However, the noble Lord raises a really important point. He is right that there has been an enormous amount of error and fraud, so HMRC has taken action and has boosted the number of people working in fraud from 100 to 500 people who are very much focused on those things. It was also the case that much of the fraud or error was happening using nominated bank accounts. HMRC has now closed the ability for companies to use nominated bank accounts, which will have an impact.