Name and address supplied
Contacting HMRC
Regarding your article ‘HMRC to go after company directors for furlough fraud’ (Jun 2).
I work for a bus company. During the Covid-19 crisis, drivers have been put on furlough on a five weeks working/three weeks furlough scheme.
Before details of furlough rules were made clear, the employers and union agreed that furloughed staff would be paid 80 per cent of their basic wage.
However, the rules state that the calculation should be made using the average hours the employee has worked in Feb 2019 or the tax year 2019-20, whichever is the greater sum.
My P60 shows I worked an average of just under 43 hours a week. I was paid 80 per cent of my contracted hours (37 hours per week) – a shortfall of just under 18 hours at £10.81 for the three week period.
When this subject is brought up, and it has on several occasions by other drivers, the reply is always: “That’s what the union agreed”. The agreement was never put to its members.
I am now trying to find a way of letting HM Revenue & Customs know.
I don’t believe my employers have acted fraudulently, but their error has cost me personally around £180 less tax and national insurance and I don’t think that’s right.
Paul Izard
Govt needs to prioritise
Regarding your article ‘HMRC to go after company directors for furlough fraud’ (Jun 2).
If HMRC is prepared to spend time chasing after businesses that have allegedly broken the rules, why is it not prepared to spend time investigating the millions of new starters who have been totally abandoned by the furlough scheme.
I personally started my new job on March 3. I was sent home on March 26.
I discovered that I was ineligible for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme shortly after as my RTI had been submitted after March 19.
I received a payslip on March 31 but all future payslips show £0.00.
I am not eligible for universal credit or jobseekers’ allowance. If I had been paid weekly instead of monthly I would have been eligible for the job retention scheme. How is that fair or even legal?
HMRC and the government should be concentrating on those that have fallen through the cracks of their hastily prepared schemes.
There will be plenty of time after the Covid 19 crisis to chase up those that haven’t abided by the rules. They should be getting their priorities right.
Leigh Iddison
